Sunrise
by Moonlight Reflection
Summary: AU, Seto&Ryuuji what if Yami no Yuugi had lost to Yami no Malik in their duel? Now, several years later, the group must convince the former pharaoh to help them defeat Yami no Malik after losing one of their own to save him. (10-8 Story Complete)
1. Lost

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Summary: AU, Seto*Ryuuji; what if Yami no Yuugi had lost to Yami no Malik in their duel? Now, several years later, the group must convince the former pharaoh to help them defeat Yami no Malik after losing one of their own to save him.

Rating: R for violence, language, shounen-ai, non-graphic NC, character death

Notes: This story does contain spoilers for what happens later in the series, so if you do not wish to know, turn back now. This story also contains some rather depressing things like character death and rape. If you don't like that, turn back now. This story contains shounen-ai. If you don't like that either, turn back now. This story also contains a somewhat happy ending. And if you don't like that, turn back now. And if you don't want to read a story that is rather jumpy and makes you believe the writer was on drugs when she wrote it (that's my impression, at least), then please turn back.

Short, Vaguely Bitchy Note: This story is **not** NC-17. I have no intention of making it so and will thus be keeping everything as non-graphic as possible.

Oh-So-Exciting-News: My first multi-parter story because I don't feel like putting the story up in its entirety. Don't know how long each part will be, don't know how many parts the story will be, don't know how long the story itself will be. I simply decided to break the parts up according to how I thought fit.

Couplings: Seto*Ryuuji, as well as mentionings of Jyounouchi*Mai, Honda*Ryou, and Yuugi*Anzu

Information Source: Manga

The one-and-only disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh is the property of Takahashi Kazuki and Shounen Jump. Additionally, prior permission has been obtained from Pikachumaniac for the use of one of her creations, which I do not claim.

*Scenes written in _italics_ take place in the past.

Everything had been going as planned until some bumbling idiot had accidentally set off the alarm.

Personally, Kaiba Seto's suspicions placed the blame of Jyounouchi Katsuya, who in his mind fitted that description perfectly. Who else could it be anyway? The group had not taken any new recruits, who just would have gotten in the way and gotten them all killed before they could even make it to the underground complex. And out of the five people that had come, only Jyounouchi was clumsy enough to do something stupid.

It couldn't have been Mazaki Anzu. She was much too careful to do something like that, although she had technically killed them all in a training session. Luckily for all parties involved, that had merely been a training session rather than real life. No, she would not make the same mistake again. Honda Hiroto? Perhaps, if he hadn't been standing right next to the brunette when the alarms had gone off, so he knew that it couldn't have been him. And certainly not his boyfriend… he didn't even bother listing off the reasons for that.

However, there was one flaw in his reasoning. Jyounouchi, unless he had stepped on something--which simply wasn't possible since both Anzu and Otogi were with him—had been given the duty of holding what they had risked their necks for.

Yet the alarm was still going on.

Finally, he decided that he didn't give a damn about who had set off the alarm off, especially since it could have just been one of those poor bastards that Otogi had hit with dice. Otogi Ryuuji—dragon son—had some fascination with dice that he simply couldn't figure out, nor did he care at the moment. They were still quite far from the escape point, and sooner or later these cavernous halls were going to be swarming with guards, shadow monsters, or possibly both if the shadow monsters didn't eat the guards first.

They had a rather nasty habit of doing that.

He could hear the shout of guards behind them, echoing through the walls and sounding much too close for comfort. For a moment, he almost considered telling Jyounouchi to drop his burden, but that would have just been, for lack of a better word, stupid. They'd nearly gotten killed to get this far, and he'd be damned if the dog just _dropped_ him.

Although the thought was damn tempting.

Yes, him. A useless him, at that, but Shaadii had told them in that enigmatic way of his that it was necessary. He hadn't bothered to explain even when Kaiba had threatened disembowelment and other inventive ways of torture, instead repeating—albeit less patiently than the first time—that the former pharaoh was crucial to what was to come.

Humph. One would think that the Egyptian had the Sennen Tauk, which they all knew for a fact that he didn't. Yami no Malik was now in possession of that item, the item with the ability to see into the future. Perhaps he had forseen this event? No, that couldn't be. The only person who could use the Tauk was dead, one of the first victims of a mad rampage of bloodshed.

They had found the former pharaoh locked in a room stripped of furnishings. The pharaoh too had nothing on except those silver chains which clinked so gently, so _musically_… and the Sennen Puzzle. Irony upon ironies. Yami no Malik had never seen need to deprive the spirit of the Puzzle, and Seto was beginning to think that he had a point. Yami no Yuugi had done _nothing_ when they had entered the room thanks to Honda's lock-picking skills, something he had picked up from Bakura Ryou during a brief romance that ended with the white-haired teen's death. Or to be more specific, his new job as the main appetizer for a shadow monster.

Perhaps to say he had done _nothing_ was a bit of an exaggeration, for Yami no Yuugi had cringed when they entered. Not that they had not done the same, for none of them had seen the once proud spirit in such a state of disarray (to put it lightly). There was an abundance of bruises on the once flawless skin, and his thighs had been covered in dry blood. Silver chains that seemed to gleam in the dim light contrasted heavily with the dull eyes—the color of fresh blood, not dry—that stared at them blankly and without any recognition of his former friends… and one rival.

As Honda had put his lock-picking skills to use on those silver chains which continued to chime with such beauty that the group had wanted to rip their ears out, Anzu had tried to speak to Yami no Yuugi, who only stared at her with a hint of confusion. Kaiba couldn't help but doubt that he even knew who the small group was.

Since then, the pharaoh had been nothing more than dead-weight. He hadn't struggled, at least, but he hadn't exactly helped, something that the brunette found extraordinarily annoying.

"Do you have anymore of those dice?" he demanded to his raven-haired lover, referring to the small, portable barriers and gas bombs that he had made. After all, Otogi did love throwing his dice, and he had developed extremely good aim over the past couple of years. Kaiba had finally created technology small enough to be the shape and size of a normal die, and everyone had been amused when he had presented them to his koi [1]. They had, however, stopped being amused when Otogi had used one against the first batch of guards and watched it work like a charm.

"Don't you think I would have used them if I had any left?" Otogi snapped, stress levels already high and at breaking point. As if he needed a scolding too.

"Did you check?"

Emerald green eyes glared at him, "Yes. Do you want to check too?" As he asked, he gestured at his tight-fitting clothes with an extremely seductive smile.

"Save the flirting for some other time, will you?" Jyounouchi interrupted acidly, starting to feel the strain of his load despite the deceptive lightness when he had first picked up the pharaoh, "How far are we from the exit?"

"Far enough to be a total pain in the ass."

~@*

_Kaiba couldn't believe what he was seeing, what he was witnessing. Nobody could, to be truthful, and for one moment, the entire world seemed to be suspended in time and spinning far away from reality. Reality… in reality, Yami no Yuugi had won, hadn't he? He was the game king, was he not? He couldn't lose this game, not here, not _now_. Not when it mattered so much to everyone involved, it just couldn't be happening._

The numbers plummeted, reaching zero. Mutou Yuugi was screaming, high-pitched and brutal on the ears as he disappeared, erased from life as quickly as the life points had been lost. Malik too disappeared, although he was still alive. At least, he thought he was alive…

The screams still echoed. There was an empty gap in the air, an empty gap that blood-red eyes had fixated upon, still in disbelief of what he had just seen.

It couldn't have happened.

A hand reached out timidly, reaching out for a person that was no longer there as his legs collapsed and sent him down to his knees, eyes still wide and staring at that gap in the air.

Laughter. There was laughter. Yami no Malik laughed as the darkness fell away, but still it was black as night. Muffled sobs from the staring group were drowned out by the laughter, although most were staring silently and in a state of shock.

Rishid and Ishtal Isis stood there as well, unsure of what to say, what to do. What comfort could they add? Both knew that soon, their lives would be extinguished by the madman standing before them, laughing as the darkness wrapped around him.

They were gone, Kaiba realized. Yuugi… that woman—Kujyaku Mai was her name, wasn't it? The victim of a batsu game [2]_,she would be dead as soon as her 24 hours were up. Bakura Ryou… the first course for the shadow monster._ [3]

__

Kaiba wondered if it was the same monster as the one that had just devoured Yuugi.

Then, suddenly, the laughter stopped. There were footsteps instead, footsteps that seemed to shake the tower they stood upon as he stepped closer and closer towards the fallen pharaoh, who still stared at that empty gap in the air.

A tanned hand grabbed the thin wrist, pulling Yami no Yuugi up. When the spirit didn't look at him, Yami no Malik's strong fingers squeezed Yami no Yuugi's chin, jerking his face towards him.

He laughed.

Yami no Malik began to laugh again as he held his prize, who didn't struggle against him. Didn't do anything except when his eyes tried to wander to that gap in the air.

It was then that Kaiba decided that he hated the pharaoh.

~@*

__

I watch as the daylight crawls

Past the shadows hanging on the wall

It's been a long time since I've felt the stain

Of yesterday getting in my way.

The words washed over him, lyrical and whimsical. It was hard to imagine that the human voice could be more beautiful than the twinkle of those chains, but perhaps anything that wasn't cold was beautiful to him right now.

Yami no Yuugi stared at Anzu as the scenery rushed by. The small group had taken to running, but the brown-haired woman wasn't ready to leave him alone yet.

She was singing to him.

The world was going absolutely insane.

The others didn't say anything, too caught up in a plan which was quickly falling to pieces. The song was specifically for him, an American song with English lyrics that he could barely understand. Her English had always been much better than theirs.

He didn't know if he wanted it.

__

I'm alive but tell me am I free?

I got eyes but tell me can I see?

The sky is falling and no one knows

It's not that hard to believe

I got air it shouldn't be this hard to breathe

The sky is falling and no one knows

Was there some significance behind these words? He had always found Anzu to be a bit of a symbol-obsessed person. Like that happy face she had drawn on their hands before he had fought Kaiba.

Kaiba. Why was he here anyway?

Jyounouchi had noticed the song, and he stared at Anzu as if she was insane. She ignored his look, and he didn't take it any further than that. There was really no reason to, and at least Yami no Yuugi wasn't so damn stiff anymore.

She had a nice singing voice. It sounded nice especially above the screeching of the alarms. The lyrics though… he thought they were kinda weird.

Which was precisely why they fitted the figure he held in his arms so well.

__

You leave me hanging on

Only to catch my breath

I got you and I got nothing left

Don't leave me all alone down here

With myself and all of my fear [4]

"Shit," somebody elegantly spat out.

He didn't bother to ask.

~@*

The first guard received a shot in the head. And not one of those vaccinations, but a gun shot, courtesy of Honda.

The blood pooled around his body. There was a time when one of them might have been disgusted by the calmness Honda had used when he shot the guard. There was a time when they actually would have cared that a human life was lost.

That was before they were capable of doing the same exact things.

"We're almost there." There was no telling what the point of those words were, whether to reassure them, keep them going, or instill a false sense of hope that would be shattered as soon as they discovered they were trapped.

Dead weight. They were risking their lives for dead weight.

Kaiba was going to kill Shaadii as soon as they got back.

The second got a die in the eye. A normal die, but it must have hurt like hell. Otogi had a small smirk on his face, congratulating himself on his good aim no doubt, but he didn't slow down so Kaiba didn't say anything. Although he did file away the information to tease Otogi with the next time they were in bed and didn't have to worry about dying in an hour.

He wondered what it would like to be normal.

Had he ever been normal?

_Let's think about that. We're currently trapped in an underground base of a sadistic madman—who had used ancient powers of darkness in order to slowly destroy the world—in a desperate and absolutely _insane_ attempt to save a former pharaoh who has the intelligence of an amoebae at the moment. The dog is carrying the before-mentioned former pharaoh. Anzu was _singing_ to him. Honda is going into psycho mode. And my boyfriend is throwing dice at people._

The last part was the only one that didn't sound really weird.

Especially when a die took the opportunity to hit him in the head right there and he found himself glaring into his koi's green eyes, "Any longer and we're all going to be the main course for the same monster that ate the others."

The unspoken message: stop your self-pitying before I find some way to shove it down your throat.

He got the message.

~@*

The exit portal was another one of those stylish inventions that Kaiba had created between figuring out how to save the world and how not to die some painfully horrid death for doing so. They could be opened only in certain places and there was quite a bit of chemistry behind it that half the time he wondered if _he_ even understood it. Supposedly it had something to do with the dark power, which Kaiba definitely didn't understand although Shaadii did.

Yeah. Whatever.

There was one flaw with the portals though… anybody could get in and out. Which meant that not only did they have to get in the damn thing before it shut, but they also had to make sure that none of Yami no Malik's cronies got in either. Or if they did, by some rather likely chance, get in, then they would expire appropriately quickly as soon as they did so.

The dog first, then Anzu. Honda next, then Otogi, and finally himself. Simple enough, as long as Anzu and Honda covered their asses on the other end when they were heading in. Which wasn't that difficult, right?

Jyounouchi was taking too long with his burden. Damn it. He should have just told the dog to _throw_ Yami no Yuugi into the portal, never mind any injuries he might sustain from such an action. Shaadii was on the other end, anyhow, and he would take care of things. Hopefully….

With surprising strength, Anzu helped shove him in before heading in herself in one graceful motion that Kaiba couldn't help but be somewhat impressed. Although it wasn't nearly as elegant as his own koi, although he might be biased on that point.

But not by much.

Honda went next, and Kaiba realized that although he loved Otogi very much, he was stuck with a person who used dice as his main weapon. Something which he found rather disconcerting, thank you very much.

Otogi must have been thinking the same thing because he smirked, pulled out a small handgun from _somewhere_ in those clothes, and with deadly accuracy shot two of the guards.

Very sexy.

Rather than voice his thoughts though, Kaiba opened his mouth to tell the raven-haired man to get his ass through that portal. He was rudely interrupted in the middle of his flirtatious words when he suddenly felt ice crawling down his spine and his mouth refused to work on its own accord.

Very, very, very screwed, he thought to himself as he quickly recognized the effects of the Sennen Rod. Yami no Malik's favorite weapon.

Otogi recognized it too, which was good because he didn't want to open up the obituaries one day and read that his koi had been shot by himself because of plain stupidity and failure to recognize that he was being controlled by the Sennen Rod.

Ducking a punch, Otogi slammed his body rather painfully against Kaiba, causing the taller man to stumble and more or less fall back into the portal. Which definitely wasn't an easy task, as Kaiba was 7 centimeters taller [5]… although he was only one kilogram heavier. Another teasing point that had earned him a rather painful kick in the groin.

The force of the shove immediately caused the already frail grip of the Sennen Rod's power to completely release him, and the last thing he saw before the portal shut was a sticky red substance shimmering slightly against the dull light, clinging tenaciously to the black strands of hair before its owner fell to the ground, still on the wrong side of the portal.

_Fuck._

Then everything went black. To be cliché.

~ _tsuzuku_ ~

Commentary (pt 1):

[1] Koi. Short for 'koibito' which means 'lover'. 

[2] Batsu. Japanese for punishment.

[3] Kujyaku Mai punishment game – volume 26. Involved bugs, not sand. Bakura Ryou punishment game – volume 27.

[4] Lifehouse's "Sky is Falling".

[5] 7 centimeters = approximately 4 and 3/4 inches

Updates occur about once a week… or more often if I get the story finished and feel like it. And I remembered why I was stupid enough to post this story… I actually enjoyed writing it. Even though I think it's really weird.

Ja ne, until next time.


	2. Snow

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Rating: It hasn't changed, peeps. Nor have the reasons.

Author notes: Did a little bit of revisions. It's not that noticeable if you've already read it before, but it does make a little bit of a difference if you haven't.

"He's naked."

There was a long silence before Jyounouchi drawled, "No really? We didn't notice."

Shaadii declined to make a reply to that statement, although he supposed there really was no way he could. Beyond making another clever yet extremely obvious observation, which he had a feeling would only serve to piss off the blonde further.

~@*

_Even evil dictators need some time off. Although one would argue that they were always having the time of their life because they were doing what they liked._

Yami no Malik wasn't about to argue that point, although he really didn't need to. If he didn't like somebody, said somebody would be hanging from a pole, wrists tied securely with his own intestines. Funfunfun.

He ran a finger across the jawbone, causing Yami no Yuugi to whimper ever so slightly, like a lost puppy. Woof.

"There's somebody to add to the list today," he started in a conversational tone. The former pharaoh stiffened against him. "Can you guess who it was?"

There was no answer. He never spoke unless he was commanded to, and questions like that didn't count.

"List them." A nail pressed deep into the broken skin, causing him to shudder.

The list was a list of people that he had once known but were no longer around. It was a fairly long list, and it grew longer each week.

"Kujyaku Mai. Bakura Ryou. Bakura. Rishid. Ishtal Isis. Ji-chan. Kaiba Mokuba. Kajiki Ryouta. Hanasaki Tomoya. Mama." [6] _The words came out automatically and devoid of all emotion. Par usual._

"You forgot one."

Silence. Yami no Yuugi was staring emptily at the fascinatingly blank wall. Unwilling to wait for the spirit to regain his senses, he grabbed a fistful of the multicolored hair and pulled hard causing his victim to squirm and whimper from the blinding pain.

It fascinated him how the pharaoh no longer reacted to anything beyond besides pain. It intrigued him.

He loved it.

"You forgot one," he repeated dangerously and Yami no Yuugi struggled futilely. And just as suddenly stopped before he stared into those unforgiving eyes.

"Aibou…" his voice cracked, betraying the surprising revelation. So the spirit did_ retain emotions. Surprise, surprise._

"I didn't hear that?" he drawled lazily, twisting the handful of hair. Yami no Yuugi yelped before gasping out, "Aibou… aibou… kisama ga aibou wo korosu."

_"Ore-sama? I don't think so." _[7] _The face leaned closer, leering. "Ore-sama? No, I think you're blaming the wrong person."_

He would have looked away if he could have. But it was already established that he couldn't or he would have already done so.

"Who killed him then?" the words came out mockingly as he looked around in false curiosity, "Could it have been you?"

"No…."

"What do you suppose would have happened if you hadn't lost?" the cold voice mused, "They wouldn't be dead then, would they?"

"No." Anger. Despair. Rejection. Total, undying, unchangeable, unrefutable agreement.

"They'd still be here at the very least, isn't that right?" he asked himself, no longer speaking to his prisoner who was staring at him in shock. Why shock? He didn't know. But he didn't particularly care either. "And I wouldn't be here. So you wouldn't be in this position? What a droll concept that is."

He wondered momentarily why he used that word. It sounded really demented, but if anybody had a problem with that, see above with what happened to people he didn't like.

"Jyounouchi Shizuka."

Yami no Yuugi stared at him in confusion, and he smirked. "Jyounouchi Shizuka." He repeated before leaning close, "You can add her name to your list now."

He swallowed his scream as he was flipped under, pressed down painfully against the bed.

For now.

~@*

When Shaadii had visited their so-called 'leader' to update on their new guest's progress (which wasn't much), he had expected the former CEO to lunge at him and try to strangle him. Or at the very least screamed at him until he went deaf in at least one ear. Already updated on the progress of the mishap of the 'rescue' mission, he would have preferred the screaming to the sullen look he got.

Well, you can't get everything you want in life.

"He's not talking."

Silence.

"You aren't either."

Glare.

"I'll leave you alone then."

He walked out.

~@*

The cut in his head had been bandaged, and rather professionally at that, convincing him that he was royally screwed when it came to the future department.

The chains were a pretty big hint too. He noticed with not just a hint of irony that he was in the same room Yami no Yuugi was in, in the same position, with the exception that he still had all his clothes. And let it be known that he was damn grateful for that.

His dice had been taken from him though, even though they were the normal type that only caused trouble when stuck in eyes, swallowed, or used to impair breathing. But _only _then, right?

In fact, the only die left to him out of his decidedly vast collection was the one hanging from his ear, so he took it off and started to do a variety of tricks with it to keep himself amused and to keep his mind off of what was definitely going to happen in the very near future. It was a shame that there wasn't some convenient explosive device hidden in it.

Well, now that the thought about it, it probably was a good thing that there wasn't a small explosive hidden in it. Imagine if it blew up while still on his ear. Definitely not a good thing, and Kaiba probably thought of that already.

Kaiba. Heh, he was probably popping a vein or something.

Funny how calmly he was accepting things today. One would think that he was musing about romantic moments he had shared, not about a rather shitty future that was, as mentioned, going to be happening quite soon.

Maybe he'd just finally lost it. Yeah. That sounded pretty good.

~@*

Shaadii hadn't changed that much in the past couple of years, which really wasn't of much surprise to anybody concerned. That man was ageless in their minds… he could have been around in ancient Egypt and it wouldn't have surprised any of them.

It was kinda annoying, actually. But there wasn't really much he could do about it so he tended to ignore it.

Yami no Yuugi was asleep. Not surprising. Kaiba had looked ready to pop a vein when he had tried to speak to the blue-eyed brunette, so he hadn't tried again. And frankly, he didn't plan on trying again for quite a while, especially if he wanted to keep his internal organs intact.

He was very worried about Kaiba's mental health, but that wasn't anything new. The young man had been rather unstable for quite a while now.

Except when he was getting laid.

He ignored that last statement, which was probably bad for his _own_ mental health anyway, and clutched the Sennen Jou. He had lost the Sennen Bakari [8] in order to escape Yami no Malik, who was now in possession of that along with the Sennen Ring, Sennen Tauk, Sennen Eye, and of course, the Sennen Rod.

No wonder they were so screwed.

With a sigh, he closed his eyes and entered the spirit's soul room. It wasn't that difficult.

~@*

The spread looked delicious. He wondered how much of it was poisoned and refused to touch any of it for the rest of the night.

No surprise.

The guard looked at him for a moment before taking away the food. Then in a conversational tone:

"They're making bets on how long it would take."

An even stare.

"How long it would take for Yami no Malik to make you scream."

Silence.

"I said an hour."

Otogi opened his mouth to correct his unwanted companion, but then decided against it and immediately shut it. He had heard the horror stories of what had happened to those foolish enough to allow themselves to fall into the hands of the psychopathic harbinger of darkness, and he had a feeling that if he bothered to say anything, he was going to be regretting it.

~@*

Dream. Nightmare. Dream. Nightmare.

Everything was twisting agonizingly around him. One moment he was in utter bliss, the next he was reliving some horrible event over and over again. His throat was dry from screaming, his face caked with that annoying hard substance from crying, and everything _hurt_ even though nothing had happened.

Dream. Nightmare. Dream. Nightmare.

There was aibou! Aibou was okay, wasn't he? And there were the others, all happy! Mai was teasing Jyounouchi much to Shizuka's amusement, Honda and Ryou were trying to avoid Yami no Bakura's wrath, Otogi and Kaiba were lip-locking right in front of a most-likely traumatized Mokuba. Isis was there, still alive, as was Rishid and Malik. Not Yami no Malik. Malik. The 16-year old boy who had been ensnared in his own mind, trapped by his darker self who now had complete control over his life.

Dream. Nightmare. Dream. _Nightmare_.

Then everything began to wither as he walked towards them, and the scene seemed to be dissipating before his eyes. No matter how fast he ran, how long he ran, he kept losing ground until they were out of sight, leaving him alone with his own darkness.

He collapsed to his knees, searching desperately for a scene that was no longer there and had never really existed.

Cold hands found his shoulder and he was trapped again, pressed between skin and sheets that smelled of corruption and seed.

Then, suddenly, he was watching. Watching as aibou struggled uselessly against the prowling hands which left no area untouched, unscathed from its burning caress. And suddenly both their worlds exploded in pain, and it was hard to tell who was who as they both opened their mouths and let out one long, agonizing scream.

It took a while for the screaming to stop.

~@*

To put it simply, the place was a wreck. Not very surprising considering the owner's mental condition (or lack thereof), but still. He had the right to be surprised by some things, even though he rarely showed it.

Thank god for poker faces.

He didn't even know how to play poker.

Not to imply that the maze was any easier to tackle. To be frank, it was even more difficult to navigate than before, what with the jumping and dodging fallen/falling pieces of brick.

Not fun.

Luckily for him, however, he remembered where the main soul room was. The one without the fifteen trillion little tricks which only served to get one killed.

Pushing the door open, he wandered in half-expecting to get maimed or cut in two before he could blink. The sweat ran down his tanned face as his eyes darted around, making sure that there were no hidden traps. He had more than his share of those the last time.

His eyes swept across the room, taking in each and every detail.

Delicate, glassy black eyes stared back.

~@*

"Well, if it isn't Kaiba Seto's fuck toy."

Otogi glared at the figure who had entered the room with a smirk and a swagger. Not that he had any reason not to be swaggering, and Otogi knew it.

"I prefer to think of it in different terms."

Yami no Malik shrugged. He could afford to. He had plenty of time right now. Kaiba and the others were stuck with an unresponsive Yami no Yuugi, who would have little impact on his own plans. After all, the once-pharaoh was stuck in a hazy fog where he knew nothing and noticed little. Not very different from being so arrogant and having his head in the clouds, but still. And him? He now had an interesting little bargaining chip, information well, and a lovely source of entertainment.

"Lover, fuck toy. Once he gets you in the bed they all mean the same thing," he grinned, sharp canines gleaming in the light. They were always so white. Why were they so white? Otogi couldn't imagine Yami no Malik brushing his teeth, not by the wildest stretch of the imagination. Or going to the bathroom. Now that was just weird.

"What do you want?" Stupid question, really, as they both knew the answer to that already. But wasn't it obligatory that the prisoner ask his psychotic jailer what the point of keeping him alive was? It was in some universal script which accounted for bad dialogue and cliché lines.

"Everything," was the short reply. "You know everything. You know the codes, the locations, the people, the traitors. And even if you don't know, _he_ knows, and anyone can be pushed into doing something," he sidled closer, running his fingers across Otogi's neck. A hand impatiently and perhaps desperately batted it away, causing him to laugh in that oh-so-maniacal way of his.

"And I suppose you just want me to tell you." The words came out with heavy breaths and a rapidly sinking heart as he felt a ball start to bounce in the pit of his stomach.

Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. He was going insane.

"No." Before an intelligent garble could escape his lips, they were swept up in a sickening embrace as sharp fang-like… thingies… bit into his bottom lip and drew blood. "I want to see what Kaiba sees in you."

~@*

Yami no Yuugi woke up to find himself staring into Shaadii's decidedly disturbing blue eyes and nearly started screaming. Face it, that man was scary.

"You're finally up." Another profound observation, Shaadii thought to himself as he wrung out a wet towel and applied it to Yami no Yuugi's forehead, which had been burning. He wondered if it was possible for spirits to get sick. Then he wondered how on earth he had gone from being mysterious Egyptian who gave odd clues to bonafide babysitter.

"… how?" his voice cracked from disuse, his throat parched from screaming. And he was talking to a man who always thought of as a psychopath. Perhaps even more of a psychopath than Yami no Malik. Peachy. Just peachy.

"You opened your eyes," Shaadii replied dryly, his voice devoid of any humor. Which was good because Yami no Yuugi didn't have a sense of humor anyway.

"Where's aibou?" Such a plaintive voice, pleading and desperately hopeful. And completely depressing.

"He's not here, pharaoh. You know that."

Silence.

Then, in that same plaintive voice, "I do. I did it."

So many lies. The truth was buried under layers of lies and deceptions, and he did not have time to pry the heart out. That would take weeks, perhaps even months. They didn't have time for that, especially when Yami no Malik had Otogi. Not to say that the raven-haired man was a coward, but there was only so much one could endure before they were reduced to a sobbing heap.

Or a machine with no soul, like the… the mere _boy_ before him.

The others had grown due to the fight for their world. The pharaoh had degenerated to the mental state of a two year old.

"Do you really believe that?"

"Yes." He didn't know why he was still speaking, to be truthful. He never spoke unless commanded to, and Yami no Malik had not demanded him to speak except when giving the list. The list which was so long but he never had trouble forgetting the names.

"Do you think Yuugi believes that?"

Yami no Yuugi flinched at the name. A curse, a blessing, an… an unmentionable name which seemed so wrong in a time like this.

"He's dead." The statement was flat. Resisting argument. Resisting life.

Shaadii shook his head before reaching over to grab something. He had had to beg Anzu to make it, _beg_. Certainly unfitting for a man of his importance, but pride could go to hell when the world was on the line. He could have revenge later.

"Yuugi? Do you think Yuugi hates you too?" he asked as his hands touched soft fur.

"Doesn't he?"

"Would he ever? You must not know him very well if you think that."

"I _killed_ him."

"You did no such thing," Shaadii interrupted sharply. He wondered if he should slap the boy, but that would probably make no difference.

Yami no Yuugi didn't reply to that accusation… which wasn't really an accusation, was it? Wasn't it the opposite?

Shaadii noticed the discomfort and changed the subject. Slightly. "While you were asleep I went through your soul room."

Yami no Yuugi just blinked at him. There was no sign that he was annoyed by the intrusion of privacy… especially since he had not known the meaning of that word for several years.

"Yuugi's still in there."

Stare. Stare, stare, stare, stare, _stare_.

"Here."

The Egyptian handed a soft white seal toy to the boy, who stared at in disbelief. Then he looked up at Shaadii, still in denial of what was being handed to him.

"He gave it to you, didn't he? You still have it. Would he give you something as important as this if he hated you? Would it still be within your mind if Yuugi no longer wanted you to have it?

"His body may be yours now, but he is still within your mind as a memory. He wanted you to have this. He still does. It was a symbol of your relationship, of moving on beyond fears of one another. And it was still there despite everything Yami no Malik has tried to take away from you."

Yami no Yuugi just continued to stare. Shaadii wondered if he heard a single word being said.

Then, timidly, Yami no Yuugi took the seal and made it wrinkle its nose in surprise, the stitched smile grinning despite the pain of the world around it.

It's name is Yuki.

Snow.

Covering the world in its cold yet loving embrace, as sweet and gentle as a fairy's kiss. [9]

~@*

The scream started a while after the door had locked. And it lasted quite a while from when it started, as long as one can conceivably hold one's breath. And as soon as it stopped it started again, a chilling process that ended and began, ended and began, over and over again.

"That took longer than I expected."

Grunt.

"Don't be a spoilsport guys. Pay up."

And among the grumbling of the losers and smile of the winner, the screams just kept going and going and going until somebody, mercifully, found the off button and shut it off.

Yet they still echoed throughout the hallways.

Over and over and over again.

~@*

"I don't suppose he'll get his act together anytime soon?" Honda asked in a completely conversational tone.

"He's got us, Shaadii, Kaiba, a defunct Sennen Puzzle, and a stuffed seal. What do you think?" Jyounouchi replied. 

"Since when did he get a stuffed seal?"

"Dunno. Shaadii had Anzu make it."

"Anzu can _sew_?"

~ _tsuzuku_ ~

Commentary (pt 2):

[6] Yami no Bakura is known as Bakura, written in katakana characters as opposed to hiragana. Mutou Sugoroku is called 'ji-chan' by Yuugi and Yami no Yuugi. Kajiki Ryouta had a fairly good relationship with Yuugi-tachi. Hanasaki Tomoya was a character who showed up in several of the beginning volumes and was a rather good friend of Yuugi-tachi. Mama is reference to Yuugi's mother, who is called 'mama' by Yuugi. Since Yami no Yuugi has made no reference to her, am inferring that he imitates Yuugi and calls her the same thing.

[7] Kisama ga aibou wo korosu. You (bastard is implied) killed aibou. Ore-sama. Arrogant way of saying 'I'. Ore is a less polite way for men to say 'I', -sama is an honorific normally reserved for kings and gods.

[8] Sennen Jou. Japanese name for what has become known as the Sennen Ankh. Sennen Bakari. Japanese name for what has become known as the Sennen Scales.

[9] Quoted from Pikachumaniac's "Fairydust", chapter 13.

See you next week.


	3. Pain

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Rating: It still hasn't changed.

A/N: Thanks to Nalan-san for tips and beta-reading. :)

Yami no Malik smirked as he emerged from the room, a twisted smirk decorating his face like frosting on a birthday cake. It had been deathly silent for a while now, which was definitely a source for wonder. There was no blood on his skin… but there usually wasn't. His clothes covered the areas where it might be.

The Sennen Rod though… that was a different story. The cap was gone and the blade was covered in blood sticky red, and one couldn't be sure whom it belonged to.

Slung over his shoulder was the unconscious body. He casually flung it at the guards, who automatically caught it before it could make a bigger mess on the insanely clean white-tiled floor.

"Clean him up."

Those were his only words before he walked away, leaving them alone with a man who looked like he had been to hell and back. Although that guess wasn't far off, considering his condition. Bruises dotted his skin, as did cuts both large and small, some of which were still. And speaking of blood, he looked as if someone had taken buckets in shades of crimson and darker reds and liberally spattered it over his body. The ponytail had dissolved into a mass of black, the headband gone and allowing bangs to cover a face that had been left disturbingly unscathed… with the exception of the split lip.

The earring was still there though.

Nobody thought twice of it.

~@*

Kaiba emerged from his hell hole[hell-hole] about twenty-four hours into the ordeal, and the first thing he did was seek out Shaadii, who had the amazing ability to be completely unreachable in Kaiba's moments of blinding rage. Thus, it was of no surprise to Kaiba that he could not find him.

So he looked for Honda and the dog. Both of whom were getting beat up by Anzu, and he realized once more that they were so screwed it wasn't even funny. But despite that knowledge, they were going to keep going at it until all of them were dead.

What a pleasant destiny that was.

He would have looked for Otogi but his boyfriend was no longer there. And he didn't want to talk to any of the newer members.

So he not-so-accidentally stumbled across Yami no Yuugi. Yami no Yuugi was sitting in bed petting a stuffed seal.

A stuffed seal.

Tell him this wasn't happening.

Millions of biting remarks came to his head. Biting remarks which he would have used if not for the fact that the scene was so utterly ludicrousy. The pharaoh was petting a stuffed seal. Did nobody else realize how insane the scenario was?

Before he could walk away, Yami no Yuugi noticed his presence and looked up at him, those blood-red eyes staring a hole into him. Unable to escape now, he leaned onto the doorframe, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.

"You feeling better, huh."

No answer. Apparently, Kaiba didn't have the magic touch of communication that Shaadii had. But that wasn't anything new.

"Supposedly, we need your help." The words were cool and apathetic, but inside he just wanted to scream for the pharaoh to stop _petting_ that damn seal. God knows what was happening to the only person he cared about since Mokuba had died, and the only guy who was presumably able to save him was sitting on the bed, still half-naked, petting a stuffed seal.

The world was going to hell.

"Are you listening to me?"

Probably not. Yami no Yuugi just continued to stare at him. It was rather disconcerting. Kaiba realized that he much preferred glaring, although he wasn't about to let the pharaoh know that.

Kaiba turned away finally, slamming his fist against the doorframe, his blue eyes glaring a hole into into it. "Damn you, Shaadii… damn you. Why the hell did you tell us to save this useless being? Now Ryuuji is stuck there and you tell me that his only hope is a man petting a seal. A seal, for god's sake. A damn _seal_."

With that, he kicked the wall—leaving a rather large hole that would probably allow rats in sooner or later—and walked back to his room, still cursing the Egyptian.

Yami no Yuugi blinked.

Yuki smiled.

~@*

Yuki kept smiling. And smiling. And smiling.

When you looked at him from above, he stared. When you looked at him from below, he smiled.

He couldn't stop. His smile was stitched. He couldn't frown. His smile would still be there. He couldn't scream in frustration. His smile kept him from doing so.

He couldn't do anything but smile. And smile. And smile.

Aibou used to smile like that.

~@*

"We need your help." Kaiba resisted the urge to kick another hole into the wall. Sooner or later, his temper would get the better of him and there wouldn't be a wall anymore. And there wouldn't be a person that he wanted to hit because the aforementioned person would be buried. With that damnable seal.

Shaadii must have been smoking crack when he had gotten it into his mind to give Yami no Yuugi the stuffed seal. Or something very similar to that, something he wouldn't mind getting his own hands on, by this point.

"Are you _listening _to me?!" Before he could stop himself, he grabbed the shorter boy by the shoulders and shook him angrily, "Can't you give me some damn sign that you are listening to me?!"

Yami no Yuugi tried to shove the taller, somewhat crazed madman away from him, but Kaiba had a very firm grip.

"Do you _understand_?! We need your damn help! We need you to help us!"

Those blood-red eyes looked up at him. He remembered them once full of such fire and determination, but they were now a mere shadow of what had once been there.

"Aibou?"

Whatever grip Kaiba might have had on his temper was quickly shaken off, and several years of pent-up frustration that had started in one fateful victory now came tearing out of his system like a rabid beast who needed a kill.

"Yuugi?! For god's sake, he's _dead_. He's dead and unless the power of these _stupid_ Sennen Items can bring him and Mokuba back to life, he's going to _stay_ dead and there's not a damn thing we can do about it! Dead… do you understand that concept?! As in not coming back to life unless you managed to put him in another gold trinket that will release him in a couple _thousand_ years?! Are you going to wait that long before getting your act together?!"

Finally releasing his bone-shattering grip on the thin shoulders, he pressed a finger against Yami no Yuugi's chest, glaring into those wide red eyes, "Get _over _it!"

Yami no Yuugi stared. Get… get over it? Just like that? Did he know what he was saying? Surely not… surely Kaiba didn't understand the multitude of his words.

"You heard me. Get over it," Kaiba hissed, making the boy wonder if he had psychic powers as well as a really good glare. "The world doesn't revolve around you, and considering how you've been acting it's a damn good thing too! You lost. You lost Yuugi. That _doesn't_ make it your fault and you should stop wallowing in your own self-pity thinking that it is because it's _not_ going to get us anywhere. I've been stuck in this hellish nightmare for god knows how long because you haven't the nerve to figure out that there was nothing you can do about it! Well, you want to know something? All of this _is_ because of you." He gestured angrily at the cold stone walls, the starving world around him, the darkness's crushing embrace.

"You happy now?

"You think Yuugi would want this to happen? It wasn't your fault he died, but even if we did make that amazing jump to an unlikely conclusion, you think he would want all this to happen?

"Get your _damn_ act together!"

With that, he stomped out of the room, slamming the door on his way out. Only to come face to face with Shaadii, who needed to be separated from his intestines.

"That was cruel, Kaiba."

Kaiba didn't say anything. He just glared.

"But it wasn't wrong," Shaadii continued, moving out of his way and allowing the brunette to push past him.

Kaiba didn't ask. Instead he stomped away, cursing and growling under his breath before the words suddenly and quite randomly registered in his mind, causing him to stop and stare at the wall.

_What the hell?_

~@*

"You really pissed him off."

It sounded rather odd for those kinds of words to come out of Shaadii's mouth, but ever since that day, everything had seemed rather strange. It had gotten to the point where very little seemed to be normal, so everything strange had to be normal. It was a twisted type of logic, but it worked so he didn't question it.

"How could he say those things?" Yami no Yuugi stared at the door that Kaiba had exited from.

Personally, Shaadii thought that Kaiba had a very good point, even if he had been rather harsh in how he had done it. There were many more eloquent ways of putting such harsh facts to light, and one tended to[one was supposed to] be more subtle about it.

But Kaiba… he hadn't given the boy any time to cope before stripping away every lie and laying the truth in relatively neat piles before him, forcing him to deal with each and every one of them. Certainly he himself would have done it in a much different fashion… but Kaiba had always been his polar.

"Because he believed them," was the short reply before he gave the former pharaoh a critical look, "Lie down. You need to rest."

"No I don't."

"Dying won't let you see Yuugi," he retorted sharply, "Kaiba Seto was right about that, at least. There is only so long that you can take to accept everything that is happening. You must realize that this is not some prolonged nightmare. We're not trying to hurt you, but ultimately you're the one hurting yourself the most. You need to let go."

"Leave me alone."

"Should I take Yuki too?"

Silence and a confused stare. And in the middle of all of this, Yuki—with his stitched smile and glass orb eyes—stared up at him innocently, smiling.

Gently, his quaking fingers reached over to finger the black yarn whiskers, and Yami no Yuugi looked up at Shaadii.

"No."

"I'll leave you then."

It seemed that nobody wanted him around these days.

~@*

The waves of nausea seemed to go up and down, like the levels of the screams that had echoed through the hallways several hours hours ago. They were reaching the maximum levels when the raven-haired man finally woke up, causing him to roll over from his position on his side and onto his stomach where he immediately retched up the little that had been in his stomach.

This was followed by a series of coughs, which didn't make anything better. In fact, he felt even more like shit, if that was possible, and now there was a rather disgusting stain on the floor. The floor which had just been meticulously cleaned of _his_ bloodstains.

He decided that he didn't care.

Green eyes stared at the mess before their owner moved gingerly, a stupid move that only sent waves of delirious pain up and down his spine. Half the time he wasn't sure where the pain was coming from… perhaps it really was coming from everywhere, and he just didn't want to accept it yet.

Slowly, carefully, he backed away from the puddle of vomit until he was leaning against where two of the walls of the room met. It hurt, certainly, but it would have hurt had he simply remained where he had been, and at least this way he was doing something vaguely productive.

The chains hampered his movements, chiming innocently as the links clinged against each other. He wanted to scream in order to drown out the sweet melody, a melody that did not belong. The bile was rising to uncontrollable levels again but he fought it down, trying his best to ignore the beautiful, lyrical song of cold iron.

_Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh_ god…

His teeth gritted as he pulled his legs up to his chest, barely noticing that all the blood was gone. And there had been plenty of blood, although he had been too intoxicated with the mind-splitting _pain_ that he had barely noticed its presence as he had fought against a demon that was incapable of being stopped.

Lithe fingers absentmindedly twisted with each other as he stared at the door warily. He knew what was just beyond that door, and he knew also that he did not want to meet it again. Not ever again.

A pathetic little sob was threatening to make itself known to the world as he realized with no doubt that he had no choice in whether or not he met that man—demon—again, and that it was most likely that the meeting would be happening soon. Whether he liked it or not, he would be going through the _same_ thing again, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Otogi buried his face in his arms, unable to deal with the agony of waiting for his fate to come with him. He _hated_ this type of waiting… he wanted to be in control of his own damn fate, not subject to the whims of a demented madman.

_Seto_.

Would he come?

Otogi Ryuuji didn't want to know the answer to that.

He sighed and didn't move, his eyes closing as he tried to block out everything that was happening around him.

He refused to cry.

__

~ tsuzuku ~


	4. Memory

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Rating: The same.

Notes: Since this chapter is entirely **flashbacks**, I decided to give myself a break and not use italics. There is a flashback for most of the characters, and they try to follow a chronological order with the second to last flashback, which actually takes place in the original series. The last flashback is the most recent, taking place in the course of this story.

This story, which is 14 pages long, is already 14 pages longer than it should be. And my self-esteem is perfectly fine, thank you very much.

Many thanks to Nalan-san for her proofreading. :)

One morning, the sun did not rise.

That was how Honda Hiroto remembered the end of the world.

That day… called hinode [10] by Yami no Malik in a fit of a need for an ironic twist… occurred exactly three weeks after Yami no Yuugi had been defeated. Honda didn't know why it had taken that long for it to happen, but perhaps Yami no Malik had to gather his wits before it could all commence.

Or perhaps he had simply wanted to cause a false sense of security to pervade through the people that knew of his coming before he struck.

Kaiba had been preparing for the strike for quite a while, so it wasn't of any surprise that he had shown up at Honda's door approximately an hour after the sun should have risen. Without a word of explanation, Kaiba had told Honda to come with him to a facility he had created to prepare for the coming darkness. And Honda had come, to see that the others were already there.

It was awkward, really, to be with the group and have no Yuugi. Yuugi was the one who had brought them together, but he was not there. He no longer even existed, for only Yami no Yuugi remained and he too was absent.

Somehow, Kaiba had used his technology and millions to send the message out that there was something coming. And he had somehow done it in a way that made people believe him, which really was no easy task. For how many people would believe that because one person had died and another had lost his will, an evil force was allowed to take over the world by releasing dark magic?

Those who had not listened were the first to go… go to death or go to the Egyptian's side, at least. Yami no Malik struck quick and hard, and often in such an erratic way that nobody knew who was next or even why.

Honda did not understand how it all worked… he probably never would. But he knew the potential the darkness had. He had figured it out when Bakura had died. He had seen it with what happened to Mai.

And he knew that the world was coming to an end when the sun did not rise that morning so many years ago….

~@*

Fate had given him an odd place in life, to say the least.

Commonly thought of as an enigma, an abnormality, a stranger to humans that did not belong in the natural order of things, he continued doing what he did without ever understanding exactly what that was. His mind was a jumbled mess of memories and past events that he neither remembered ever experiencing nor managed to make sense out of. Some seemed to be from the beginning of time while others seemed to come from a birth that occurred only recently. Nothing fit; everything was disjointed. He didn't understand and he didn't know of anyone who could explain to him the mystery that was his life.

Nobody knew much about him, and sometimes Shaadii believed that he knew about as much as everyone else. It wasn't a pleasant concept, nor a welcome one, but it was something that he had come to terms with over and over again. Granted, he would give anything to be normal, but normal wasn't an option so he didn't bother to try for it.

He knew things that nobody else knew, things that were to have great impact on future events. He knew how to change them, how to prevent them. It seemed he was the human personification of fate, but was there such a thing?

Sometimes he wondered about that.

He had been surprised when he learned that the pharaoh had lost the duel to the Egyptian's other personality. He hadn't been expecting _that_, but he probably should have. He had seen a world dark and corrupted by an evil force, but he hadn't bothered to look into it. One of the problems with having so many memories and so many visions of the future was that he sometimes couldn't discern one from the other.

His Sennen Items reacted strongly to the surge of yami no chikara [11], and he immediately had known what happened. He didn't even know how he knew, but there just seemed to be a little voice in his head telling him.

Perhaps it was the suppressed power of fortune-telling that he sometimes wondered if he had.

Immediately, he had known that Yami no Malik would be coming after him, not only because he owned two Sennen Items but because Yami no Malik had never liked him in the first place. A personal grudge that could result in rather messy corpse on the ground.

His, to be exact.

Somehow, he managed to distract Yami no Malik with the Sennen Bakari. He didn't even know how he managed to do it, but he no longer bothered to question what the fates had given him. Or was he fate? He hated not knowing who he was, and he wondered if he would find out who he was meant to be after he had completed his role.

He couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he never was going to complete his role. Perhaps he was to be caretaker of the world until the goddamn end of time.

Shaadii had left Egypt immediately after he had confirmed the news, journeying to Japan to find the others. There he had found a wasteland. Most of the people were already in hiding, but it didn't take him very long to find the people who mattered. Kaiba Seto had set up a small underground organization, but it wasn't easy to hide from him.

Not that they would if they knew the things that he did. He knew how to end all of this, how to turn back the destruction. But in order to do that, he needed Kaiba's small guerilla group to carry out his words.

Fate slipped past the guards and entered the sanctuary, darkness grasping at his clothes in a final attempt to keep him there before he destroyed it forever.

~@*

They say that you never forget the situation you were in when you first heard of bad news.

Jyounouchi Katsuya wasn't sure how to answer to that statement, but he couldn't help but see a bit of truth in it.

"Jyounouchi."

Nobody quite knew how it had happened, but Otogi Ryuuji had somehow managed to become the harbinger of bad news. Every time somebody had died, Otogi was the one who told the victim's relatives. It had gotten to the point where most of the newer recruits ran away when they saw him coming, fearing the worst. In fact, Kaiba was the only one who didn't flinch when Otogi approached him… although that was probably because he didn't have anybody else to lose since Mokuba had been one of the first to go.

Currently, Otogi was playing with a die. Jyounouchi hoped that it wasn't one of the explosive dice that Kaiba had made. Even though everyone knew that Otogi was graceful and sure of hand, it didn't mean that he wasn't liable to make mistakes and blow the two of them up.

"What?"

The idea that people fought to preserve the future was somewhat true, but in Jyounouchi's experience, people fought to protect something precious to them. The future was such a distant thing and offered no comfort, so they were forced to cling to something else in order to preserve their sanities. Sometimes it was memories, sometimes it was morals… but usually people fought to protect somebody that they loved.

That's what Jyounouchi had been doing. Many of the people who hadn't been killed by the darkness in the first wave had fled to underground refugee camps, while those who chose to fight had organized in Japan.

She had wanted to fight.

He wouldn't let her.

Although Jyounouchi Shizuka had capitulated to his demands, she had fought in her own way by working as a leader in the refugee camps. She wasn't in as much danger as her older brother was, but she was still an important part of the fight by raising morale and keeping people from defecting to the other side. She encouraged those who wanted to fight if they were able, and convinced those who would not last to stay. Simply put, she was the mother who took care of her children as best as she could.

He knew what Otogi was going to say before he said it. It was a gut instinct which made him want to puke as soon as the realization made itself known to him.

Otogi seemed to know too, his usually hard green eyes softening ever so slightly. It wasn't much, but it was as close to sympathy as he could get.

"I'm sorry."

There was no fanfare. There was no parade for a heroine now lost. There wasn't anything. She was gone and only those who were affected by her cared. She had done her best to keep this war from consuming everything that she cared about and instead, it had taken her.

He had fought to protect her, to make sure that one day she would be able to see the future and not be buried in the embrace of darkness. That was his goal, his… his motivation.

There was only so long he could use revenge as his motivation. There was only so long he could fight to redeem the memory of his dead sister. It just didn't work the same way. How to fight for somebody who was dead? How to go through each day realizing slowly that the fight was never going to be over, but you didn't care as much as you used to because the person you were fighting there wouldn't be there to see the end result?

He hated all of this so much. If it was his decision, he would just leave to go to those camps and be done with it. He didn't need this… none of them did, really. Mai was already gone. Kaiba no longer had his brother. Anzu no longer had Yuugi. Honda no longer had Bakura.

_What were they fighting for?_

He honestly didn't know anymore.

"How did it happen?" he finally managed to get out without choking.

"Traitor."

"Who?"

"Dunno. They never found him."

Silence.

And the only thing that was running through his head was—this was what he was fighting for?

He was fighting to save the future of humanity. No longer did he have anything but the memory of Shizuka. He was fighting to save humans from the darkness that threatened to swallow them whole, but more often than not, it seemed an impossible goal.

Especially when the darkness came from within themselves.

~@*

"Kaiba, are you listening?" Otogi's voice sounded very annoyed, and the question was accompanied by an impatient tapping of the foot, "You've been staring at me for twenty minutes and you haven't spoken once. Have you finally lost it?"

Kaiba Seto didn't bother to grace the question with an answer. In fact, he hadn't even heard the question, as he was too busy staring at the green-eyed wraith standing before him, a slender finger twisting at a lock of raven black hair. 

Out of the small band of leaders, it seemed that Otogi Ryuuji was the luckiest. Luckiest in that the only person he had lost was somebody he could very well do without. Still cocky, still showy, Otogi was the only one who seemed unaware that he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It was intoxicating.

There was a physical attraction, certainly. Who wouldn't be attracted to those fascinating green eyes, which seemed so cat-like and matched the young man's feline grace? He could sneak up behind somebody without the person ever knowing better, his steps so silent and careful. It was a quality that had many a time almost shocked the ice man (as he was called by everybody else), but Kaiba knew how to keep his emotions in check and never gave anymore than a quirked eyebrow when he was the victim of one of Otogi's sneak attacks.

He didn't know why, but Otogi captivated him in a way that nobody else ever had. Whether it was because of looks or attitude, Kaiba didn't care anymore. To him, Otogi was perfection molded into a human form, and he was unable to resist its charms.

"Kaiba…" Otogi rolled his eyes as he continued to tap his foot. Tap, tap, tap. No response except the stare.

Ryuuji. Dragon son. Perhaps it was ironic that the master of the dragons should be so beguiled by the dragon's son, but he hoped that he would be able to tame the dragon son. Not be trained by _it_.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Otogi was obviously starting to lose his temper, his eyebrow twitching as he abruptly slammed his hands on the desk, "Kaiba! What is wrong with you?! I've been talking for god knows how long and you're on a different planet! Do you think you could pay attention?!"

Kaiba didn't respond.

Growling, Otogi turned to walk away when a cold hand suddenly wrapped around his thin wrist.

He felt rather bony, Kaiba mused to himself as green eyes filled with shock stared into his eyes, which he _hoped_ were emotionless. It was interesting to see shock in those eyes, and Kaiba couldn't help but be a bit pleased that he was the one who had caused the burst of emotion.

"Kaiba?" was the confused question.

Before he could stop himself, not that he actually wanted to, Kaiba ignored common sense and leaned forward to gently press his lips against Ryuuji's into a searing kiss that was soft yet passionate at the same time. He didn't know how long it lasted, but he would be the first to admit that it felt very nice and he was mildly upset when it ended.

Ryuuji barely noticed that Seto was no longer holding his wrist, instead entranced by those blue eyes which… were they pleading with him?

"Did you like that?" Seto found himself asking.

Ryuuji found himself nodding.

Then, slowly, tentatively, Ryuuji ran a finger down the edge of Seto's face before pulling him close to initiate a kiss of his own. A kiss of pent-up frustrations and a need for somebody in the eternal night that they had been forced into.

_It's not the same as Mokuba being alive again_, Seto mused to himself as he started laying small kisses down Ryuuji's neck, _But it's a damn good replacement_ [12].

~@*

_"Daga…… Ore no kioku ga modoranakute mo kamawanai……"_

The tears started to drip from his large violet-red eyes. Yami no Yuugi was hard-pressed not to let the shock register on his face as he once again comprehended exactly how much his omote cared for him.

He was still searching for something to say when Yuugi's words interrupted his thoughts.

"Boku mo… boku mo… zutto…"

Hands clenched the Sennen Puzzle.

"Boku no…… Boku no kioku wo zenbu ageru kara………"

Yami no Yuugi didn't know how to respond to that… that gentle yet powerful vow of love and friendship. So instead, he distracted himself by calling Yuugi's attention to the scene below them.

"Miru yo! Aibou!"

Yuugi blinked back the tears as he looked down to see his friends looking up at him. And for a moment, he forgot everything that he was originally going to say. [13]

~@*

Otogi blinked, emerald eyes hazy and sightless. Violet eyes stared back as a rough hand brushed away a strand of damp, raven black hair.

They really were a nice shade of violet, his disjointed thought process finally decided on… light and similar to orchids. A secret admirer had once left orchids for him, and they were almost the same color. He never did find out who that secret admirer was… chances were likely that she or he were already dead, but it didn't really matter, did it?

No. He didn't think so.

"Did you like that?" The question was hauntingly ironic. Otogi couldn't help but wonder if Yami no Malik did that on purpose. It was very possible, yet highly unlikely.

It's really one or the other, Otogi realized. He just didn't know which one it was, but he didn't really want to figure it out either.

Yami no Malik smiled, white fangs glistening and making him look like a deranged vampire. Although considering how much Yami no Malik enjoyed the taste of blood, perhaps the title was not too far off.

Otogi found it amazing that he had been broken so easily. Well, perhaps not broken, but something along those lines. Not to say that he wasn't expecting it, but reality never does quite sink in until it's staring at one in the face.

_Did you like that?_

Funny. Those were the first words Kaiba had said to him after the kiss. And now they were the first words Yami no Malik had said to him after the assault. How could it be that he would one day be having fantasies and nightmares spurred by the same exact words?

They really weren't very strong. Nobody was. One could create barriers and walls in an attempt to keep others out, but find the weak point and everything would crumble. Perhaps that is what had happened to him?

He had to force himself to breath in and breath out. Since when was breathing a task? Well, since when was the world under the thumb of a malicious dictator? Since when did the world become so enshrouded in its own darkness, a darkness that had always existed but needed to be tapped?

Since when did the sun refuse to rise?

Since when, indeed. So many questions, and the only thing he could think about was the pain. How pitifully self-absorbent that was… but perhaps the individual who had those type of thoughts should try and go through what _he_ had just gone through and then we'll see where those thoughts went.

Somewhere in the foggy depths of his mind, he finally noticed that Yami no Malik was grinning at him. For one reason or another.

Why, why, why? The world was swimming in questions and he knew no answers. It was likely that nobody did, but did that mean that these questions were meant to exist only to confuse? What was the point in that then?

Distantly, he could hear Yami no Malik speaking. But he couldn't understand the words. It was as if something was muffling all his senses, preventing him from understanding what was happening around him.

Nails dug painfully into his skin and hands touched him where he did not want to be touched, causing him to jerk in… it wasn't surprise, but something different and intangible.

He realized, somehow, that he couldn't deal with this anymore. His senses were becoming more and more blurred, and everything was starting to get unbearably fuzzy.

His mind was starting to shut down from the stress, and he quite honestly did not mind.

And as Yami no Malik leaned closer to force him into another of those unwanted kisses, his mind quietly let go of reality and allowed him to experience the comfort of dark nothingness as he finally passed out.

__

~ tsuzuku ~

Commentary (pt 4):

[10] Hinode. Sunrise.

[11] Yami = Dark. No = possessive particle. Chikara = power. Dark power.

[12] No incest is implied. Really.

[13] Scene comes from volume 17. Tentative translations:

Yami no Yuugi: However…… I do not mind if my memories do not come back……

Yuugi: I… I… I'll give you all of my memories.

Yami no Yuugi: Look! Aibou! (partner)

Omote. Surface, front. How Japanese fans refer to Yuugi, Ryou, and Malik.

The context of this section is that Yami no Yuugi and Yuugi are speaking about Yami no Yuugi's desire to find his memories. However, he also realizes that he is liable to have to leave Yuugi if he does so, so he tells Yuugi that he doesn't mind if his memories don't come back as long as he can stay with him. Yuugi is saddened by Yami no Yuugi's sacrifice and offers to give him all his memories. The anime episode this was in was in the episode where Kaiba Seto visited Isis Ishtal at the museum and saw the tablets. I do not know what they did in the dub.


	5. Question

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Rating: The same. Although now there's a shower scene with Kaiba.

Notes: Returning to the present in this chapter. Things are probably going to start picking up now.

Also, a correction. Due to the Yu-gi-oh character guide and manga volume 19, I have reason to believe that Shizuka's last name is _not_ Jyounouchi, but Kawai. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

The water was hot and it stung his skin, but it still wasn't hot enough. He growled in frustration and reached over to lessen the amount of cold water, only to discover that the cold water was already off and the hot water was already at its maximum.

So why in god's name did he still feel so damn _cold_?

The same thing had happened last night, when he was trying to get to sleep. Instead of sleeping, he ended up tossing and turning, plagued by half dreams and the bitter cold which refused to leave him alone. He felt like he was missing something that he couldn't do without, and he _was_. He was missing something that kept him going, and he didn't know if the person was even alive.

It was just so cold.

It was hard for him to admit that he could be so dependent on a single person, but it was true. Before the dragon son, he had his brother. For so long, his brother was what had kept him alive through the orphanage and Kaiba Gouzaburou's treatment. And now that his brother was gone, he had come to depend on his lover.

He'd wondered many times what attracted him to Otogi Ryuuji in the first place. Was in the looks? The cockiness? The… whatever? What was it about him that made him so irresistible to the man who wasn't supposed to have emotions anymore?

Why did he allow himself to care so much for a single person when he knew that it could result in more pain than he ever wanted to deal with?

He didn't know the answers to these questions, and he didn't know if he ever would. But all he knew right now was that he no longer had his black-haired lover next to him, and that he was unbearabally cold despite the water's heat.

_"We're running out of time."_

The Egyptian's words ran through his head again as the water dripped from his wet hair and onto his skin. Running out of time? Fu, tell him something he didn't know already. Who would know that better than him?

_"I know that already. You don't think I know that?!"_

"I do not refer to your personal loss, Kaiba."

His fingers twitched as one of those annoying chills fell across him again.

_Why_ was he so cold?

~@*

Yuki looked up at him expectantly. The fear was easily visable in those crimson red eyes, but his black eyes never left him.

"I can't go in there," the words came out in a parched whisper, barely audible.

There was a time where he would never admit that he was scared. But that time was from a long time ago, and those types of fears didn't apply to him anymore. He just didn't care anymore, to be truthful….

The little white seal might have said something if he could have. But since he couldn't, he just kept looking at him expectantly.

_Why not?_

"I can't…" he wanted to scream, to cry, "I can't. This was a mistake. I shouldn't even be here."

'Here' was the corridor that connected his kokoro no heya to Yuugi's kokoro no heya. He stood in the middle now, afraid of both doors. One was pure white, the other covered in twisted vines and the trademark eye (Nalan-san, do you know what this type of eye is called? I forgot…).

And he was trying to figure outwhat on _earth_ had possessed him to come here in the first place. He didn't even know how he managed it. Once upon a time, it had been very easy for him. But he had gone through who knows how many years without using his yami no chikara. Without ever even remembering that it was there, waiting for him to tap into its darkness.

He was darkness, after all. He could try to admit it but in the end, he was still a representation of the darker elements of life.

Yuki… Yuki was white and fluffy and pure like the door. Like Yuugi. Like mou hitori no ore. Like aibou. Like… the person he had come to think of us as a darling younger brother who he could never live without.

Why was he here? Not here, in the corridor specifically, but here on earth. Why was he here when Yuugi wasn't anymore? Wasn't it supposed to be that he couldn't live without the teenager? Wasn't he supposed to be dead right now?

_Do you think Yuugi believes that?_

Yuki kept staring.

For the first time in such a long time, Yami could feel a bit of anger starting to rise in him, like bile. His voice pushed the words forward again, stubborn and impatient, "No. I can't. I can't do this."

_Why not?_

"Because!"

_Because?_

Because? There had to be an answer to all this madness? This… this actually required an answer… actually could be _given_ an answer?

No. NO.

"Because it reminds me of him," he finally whispered as he closed his eyes and the tears started to fall again.

If Yuki could, he would have placed a comforting hand on the spirit's arm. If Yuugi could, he would have done that too.

~@*

"What are you doing here?"

Yami no Malik couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as he glared at his host, who just glared back. Malik Ishtal, after all, did not have anything to fear for now. Trapped in a glass pyramid [14], trapped in his own mind, trapped by an extension of his _own_ personality… what did he have to lose now anyway? Neesan [15] and Rishid were gone. He had nobody left now. The darker version of him had taken everyone he cared for away from him.

"You're being rather brash right now for someone trapped like a cockroach, don't you think?" he couldn't help snap bitterly.

A small smile made its way onto Malik's face. There was nothing more he loved more than riling the other him since he knew there was very little he could do otherwise. In a way, it was the only way he could get back at the other being, and he never allowed himself to lose an opportunity.

"Perhaps. So what are you doing here?"

"I'm asking the questions."

"You actually have questions that I can answer?"

"Shut your mouth."

"Make me."

There was silence before Yami no Malik walked over to the class, his face twisted into a sneer as he looked down at his host, "You may think that I've done all that I can to you already, but you are very wrong."

Malik merely blinked before leaning back, "So ask."

"What did you intend on doing after you killed the pharaoh?"

Malik stared, "_Why?_"

"Tell me."

There was a long silence before Malik started to laugh for the first time in all these years, "You want… to know? You honestly… want to know?"

There was no answer as Malik continued to laugh in a way that would have made everyone think that he had finally gone insane.

"Me? I would have gone to neesan. Told her that I had saved us from something that had never threatened us. Who knows? Maybe I'd have released Rishid from his promise to protect our family. Maybe I would have kept working with the Rare Hunters. Who knows?

"But you? What are you going to do after you succeed at your goal? You don't have anyone to go to, unlike everyone else on this fucking planet. What do you have now, my dear other self?"

Silence, except for the mocking, taunting laughter.

Yami no Malik's face contorted and he was ready to stomp out if not for Malik's sudden interjection, "You don't know what to do, do you? Because you don't have anything to do. You're lost and alone and you came to me for help because you have nobody else to ask for help from. You were hoping, deep down within, that I might have an answer to give to you. But I don't. Nobody does because frankly, you shouldn't exist anymore. You're a phantom and physical manifestation of something that doesn't belong anywhere, so you took your anger out but now you're wondering what's next. So you run around like a sad little boy who has no direction in life. Poor you.

"And you think you can hurt me anymore than you already have? I'm afraid that's not possible anymore. You can't kill me. You can make my life a living hell but isn't that what it is already? But at least I have more than you do. I had people who cared about me. You never did. Nobody ever cared for you, so you take everything away from other people in a pathetic attempt to make yourself feel better. But it doesn't work too well, does it?"

He wasn't hearing this. Tell him he wasn't hearing this. His fist tightened around the Sennen Rod as his host continued to laugh at him, at his plight. At the fact that he was just as pathetic as everyone else, and perhaps even more so.

Growling softly, he used the power of the Sennen Rod to take control of Malik's body. Malik didn't fight, didn't even flinch as he was suddenly flung against one of the glass sides with a sickening crash. Instead, he just picked himself up and continued to laugh, almost as insanely as Yami no Malik.

"This is just precious, you know that? The great big hotshot himself. Stripped of all his layers, you've got nothing. You are nothing. Don't like to face that, do you?"

The mocking laughter followed him as he abruptly withdrew from the kokoro no heya. Even as he stood there, practically seeing red as his knuckles turned white as they were clenched so tightly around the metal of the Sennen Rod, he continued to hear the laugh of his host.

_Nobody ever cared for you, so you take everything away from other people in a pathetic attempt to make yourself feel better. But it doesn't work too well, does it?_

"Urusei," he hissed as he stalked out of the room, ignoring as the insects otherwise known as people quickly scrambled to get out of his way, as if he actually cared about who they were or if they were trampled under his wrath.

Malik continued to laugh.

Yami no Malik slammed a metal door open, allowing a smirk to slip over his face, to mask his inner pain.

Green eyes stared back, struggling to hide fear and failing quite miserably at that. And so he pushed back his doubts, his questions, his _agony _as he walked towards his victim.

For at least Otogi's screams would block out Malik's laughter.

~ _tsuzuku ~_

Commentary (pt 5)

[14] Reference to volume 26

[15] How Malik refers to Isis.

Notes to Readers:

Neko-chan: Yes. My self-esteem is perfectly fine. So don't say anything.

Amiasha Ruri: :) It's supposed to be depressing.

Dee Jay: Don't worry. I won't kill Otogi. Now, putting him in a coma for the rest of his life… that's a different story.

Yersi Fanel: I try to update once a week but school work has been getting in the way. Sorry about that. And I will do something for Yami, but I'll also let you know that I like Otogi very much. Which might be why I'm hurting him so much right now.

Thanks everyone.


	6. Fairy Tale

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Notes: I'm trying to wrap up the story. Really.

        Yuki was sad. You couldn't tell it because of his cute little stitched smile, but he was sad. He would have cried but he only had glass eyes. His heart would have hurt but there was only white cotton stuffing.

        How horrible it must be, to have emotions and not be able to express it. And how equally horrendous it must be to want to move on with life, only to be trapped in a world where nothing made sense and chaos ruled all.

~ * ~

        "I don't think I quite understood you correctly, so let me make sure. Did you just say that we _can't do anything right now?" Kaiba Seto growled softly._

        Many a man had flinched away from his glare, but Shaadii was no ordinary man. He just stared at Kaiba solemnly, his expression never changing.

        "I don't think your hearing is as bad as you make it out to be," was his soft reply. Kaiba looked ready to scream.

        "What do you _mean we can't do anything?! Are you crazy?! What are we supposed to do, stand around here and wait for a carcass to be dumped on our front doorstep? With an army to back it up?!"_

        Shaadii stared at him… or through him was really more accurate. Shaadii never seemed to look at anybody… except Yami no Yuugi. Yami no Yuugi was his pharaoh, in the past and in the present. A broken, pathetic shadow of the pharaoh, granted, but Shaadii wasn't exactly a picky person.

        "I did not say that, Kaiba," he spoke calmly, "You are not listening to me."

        "Yes I am!"

        "No, you're not," Shaadii repeated patiently, "I said we cannot do anything about Otogi right now. However, what we need to do is get through to the pharaoh."

        Kaiba wanted to reach over and strangle the Egyptian until he turned blue, "The pharaoh this and the pharaoh that! I'm sick of you telling me that it's about him, him, him, _him. _Why_ is it about him?! What do we have to do about him?! You telling me this is not changing anything! I don't know how to change somebody who doesn't want to be changed! If I could, I would have changed Yami no Malik's organ order and then that would have been the end of that! Then we wouldn't have to be standing here having this conversation! Tell me, Shaadii. _What do you want me to do?_"_

        "Wait."

        "Wait? _Wait?! You just told me that we had to get through to that damned vegetable sitting on a god damned bed petting a fucking stuffed seal! And __now you're telling me I have to wait?! Why the hell can't you make up your mind?!"_

        "You need to learn how to be patient."

        "I have been patient. How many people do you think can just wait here for fate to intervene and force that child pharaoh to get his act together?"

        Shaadii just blinked before turning and walking away.

        Kaiba watched him go, eyebrow twitching. But as soon as the Egyptian was gone, he cursed himself for his own weakness and found himself sinking to the ground into a sitting position. And he kept staring at the wall across from him, as if he was expecting an answer to emerge from it.

        Whether or not he was, the wall didn't have any answers to give that night.

~ * ~

        Once upon a time, there was a young man named Mahaado. He grew up to be a very important priest to the pharaoh, and eventually came to possession a powerful Sennen Item known as the Sennen Ring. But then in order to protect his pharaoh, he sacrificed his life in order to kill a thief named Bakura.

        However, he failed to kill the thief, who ended up stealing his Sennen Ring. And Mahaado was no longer known as Mahaado, but was now the Black Magician.

        And everyday, he wondered to himself what the world would have been like if he had managed to kill Bakura. Would his pharaoh have had to seal himself in the Sennen Puzzle? Would the Sennen Items ever have been scattered? Would the young man named Malik Ishtal ever have come across the Sennen Rod? And would a new threat named Yami no Malik ever come into existence if he had succeeded in his duty and destroyed Bakura when he had the chance?

        Mahaado… or the Black Magician, as he was unworthy of keeping his name (in his eyes, at least), constantly wondered about that. Which might perhaps explain why he was listening to a little seal with soft white fur and big brown eyes.

        Listening was not the exact word he would have used to describe what he was doing. Especially since Yuki was not exactly speaking.

        However, he did pay very close attention to what Yuki had to tell him. Yuki had been his constant companion for several years, and he had come to like the little seal (somewhat). At least Yuki didn't go around playing pranks on him.

        Technically, Yuki was not capable of those types of things, but that had nothing to do with the point. The point was that since Yuki didn't cause trouble, he listened to Yuki. Although he wasn't really listening right now, was he.

        Yuki had existed in Yuugi's subconscious for quite a long time. He had been given away when Yami no Yuugi had found him, a gift from the teenager to show his affection. And recently, he had been given a physical form, thanks to the efforts of Shaadii and Mazaki Anzu.

        It had been a long time since either mage or seal been summoned to their master's presence… well, not exactly. Yami no Yuugi had not summoned them; he barely knew that they were more than what they seemed.

        But just because he had forgotten didn't mean that they had faded away.

        _I'm listening,_ the Black Magician told the seal. Even though it had already been established more than once that he wasn't really listening.

        Yuki continued to smile as the Black Magician picked him up and nuzzled him against the pale blue face [16].

        _You do, however, understand that this is not going to be as easy as you hope it will be_, he admonished even as he petted the little seal.

        Yuki looked at him balefully. Of course he knew. Just because he had stuffing for brains didn't mean that he lacked all intelligence.

        After all, if it was as easy as he had hoped it would be, they wouldn't have to be speaking like this. If it had been that easy to force the pharaoh to confront his past, then perhaps the sun would have risen long ago…

~@*

        And in the beautiful kingdom, there lived a beautiful princess with blonde hair and violet eyes. She had loved and been loved by a handsome prince, but she was dead and the prince was now depressed.

        So it goes.

        Said prince was now eating mush in the cafeteria. Barely edible mush at that, since their last cook had caught something similar to bubonic plague and died.

        Said prince was also getting very distracted by a certain blue-eyed brunette who kept walking in and out of the room, pausing only long enough to look distastefully at the blonde or the mush or both… before walking right out again. But then, three minutes later, he would be walking back in so as to begin the whole process over again.

        Said prince was now getting really, really pissed.

        Before Kaiba could walk out of the room again, Jyounouchi pushed aside the inedible mush and hissed, "Jeez, Kaiba! Just sit down already!"

        Kaiba stared at him with a 'Who the fuck are _you_?' expression on his face. But then he blinked and reality quickly set in. His face became hard as he glared, "I'd rather not be anywhere near you right now, make inu."

        "That's hard to believe since you walked in and out here about a hundred times already."

        Maybe they could feed Yami no Malik the mush. That ought to kill him.

        "I'm thinking." A conceited smile. "I don't suppose you know what that would mean, would you."

        "You're not thinking," Jyounouchi corrected. "You're obsessing."

        Kaiba's expression darkened as Jyounouchi finally decided that force-feeding Kaiba the mush wouldn't do any good. But that didn't mean he couldn't force-feed him logic.

        "Your obsessing and pacing isn't going to help get him back. Why don't you listen to Shaadii for a change and give the man a chance?"

        Kaiba threw up his hands in frustration, "I think I've given him enough of a chance. That's what got us into this damn mess in the first place. He tells me to jump and I jumped. He told me to get the vegetable out and I did. And now he tells me to wait while Ryuuji is probably getting killed. What I want to know is how the hell he knows any of this is going to work out. Does he have a little voice in his head that tells him what to do? Huh? We're being guided by a social misfit, so of course I'm not going to be happy."

        "You're one to talk about social misfits," Jyounouchi snorted. Maybe if they fed the shadow monsters the mush, the monsters would vomit up certain white-haired social misfits. Then at least Honda would stop sulking. Unless Ryou was already digested. That would be a horrible and traumatizing sight to see, if he dared to say so himself.

        "You want to repeat that, zako? [17]"

        "Yeah. You're a social misfit." If worst came to worst, he did have the mush as a weapon. "And you're pathetic."

        "Pathetic?!"

        "Yeah. That's right," Jyounouchi didn't bother to let Kaiba vent his anger. "So maybe we screwed up when we got Yami out. Maybe you lost somebody. Fine, it's nothing the rest of us haven't gone through. You think he was your last thread to sanity, but if any of us were sane, would we still be here?

        "Shaadii can be pretty weird sometimes, and you probably got a point in wondering how we can be ordered around him. But I also know that right now, he's the most capable for handling this mess. He's got nothing to lose, so he can do whatever he needs to do. He has nothing to distract him. You do. So why don't you just shut up, relax, and let him do what he has to do?"

        Silence.

        Finally, Kaiba turned and started to walk away. But before he reached the door, he turned around and glared.

        "He gave Yami a stuffed seal."

        "So?"

        Kaiba looked ready to kill as he repeated in an exasperated tone, "A seal!"

        With that, he turned and walked away. Jyounouchi knew that he wouldn't be coming back, but frankly he didn't mind being alone with his mush.

        And thus, the handsome prince went back to remembering a time when his beautiful princess was there for him. And vice versa.

~@*

        And in another part of the kingdom, a young man with multi-colored hair and wine-red eyes found himself being confronted by a see-through spirit. That was very random and very odd, he thought to himself. But even odder was the little seal being held in the Black Magician's arms that was an exact replica of the little seal he himself held.

        _We must talk_. The Black Magician's voice was insistent.

        Where?

        _I cannot stay in this form much longer. You must come to our room._

        Yami paled.

        But I can't.

        _You must._ Mahaado looked down on him, blue eyes gentle. _If you are the man I have dedicated and sacrificed my life to, then you will._

        With that, both he and Yuki disappeared. Leaving Yami grasping empty air and trying to figure out when reality began and fantasy ended.

Commentary (pt 6):

[16] In the manga, the Black Magician has blue skin, blonde hair, and dark blue robes edged in red.

[17] Small fish

Notes: Sorry it's been so long since I updated. And it'll probably be a while until I update again. Am having problems with this story, sadly enough… but I'll do my best to get something up in a couple weeks.


	7. Hallway

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Notes: Sorry for taking so long to update, but I've been distracted. I hope to resume a more regular updating schedule though, so hopefully this won't happen again.

In terms of where we are in this story, I honestly don't know I think I'm getting close to the final chapters, but I'm not certain. (And no, I don't know why I bothered to mention this….)

Anyhow, more relevant to this story, many thanks to Nephthys, Ninetails-chan, and Nalan-san for their help. It is deeply appreciated. Also, many thanks to the reviewers. :) Sorry it took me so long.

_~ Live free or die… ~ [18]_

        The hallway split into two corridors, and the only thing he could do was think about how it hadn't done that in the past.

        He wasn't quite sure how he knew that, and he wasn't sure how he had even managed to get there. One moment, he had been confronted by a see-through Black Magician holding his Yuki. But the next….

        Yuki didn't seem as white as the one Anzu had made for him, but it seemed more… familiar. How, he wasn't sure, but for one moment he had wanted to reach out to hold the little stuffed seal. Something kept him from doing so though, and he had a pretty good suspicion of what that something was.

        It was the same reason why he had never ventured into his kokoro no heya before.

        This feeling… these _memories. He could hear his aibou talking, laughing, comforting… simply _being_ there for him. His aibou had promised to help him find his memories, but instead he had lost the duel against Yami no Malik. And because of that, Yuugi was gone._

        As were the conversation, the laughter, the comfort… him.

        When he had been trapped with the psychotic darkness, he had been forced to live without the person who had taken the time to make him human. To do so, however, proved to be a task that was more difficult than losing Yuugi in the first place.

        For in order to survive, he had to stop living.

        Everything that he had lived for, everything that he had _been_ was roughly stripped and locked away where it would no longer interfere with his survival. He didn't know why he had done it, especially when one considered the number of times he had wished he truly was dead. Often, he blamed Yami no Malik for the curse of his continued existence. But now, standing here, he realized why his prayers had never been answered.

        After all, one who is dead cannot die again.

        The realization struck him hard, unbidden and unwanted. The truth was so hideous that he did not want to face it, did not know _how_ to face it.

        So instead, he stood there.

        He stood there and wondered why this had happened. He wondered about how he could ever have let this happen.

        But most of all, Yami wondered what to do with the choice that had been laid before him.

        Two doors, each leading to something he did not want but could no longer run away from.

~@*

        It seemed like a simple decision… one of those decisions that were tipped so heavily in favor for one side that most people would not bother to hesitate in making their decision.

        Yet the offer that had been placed on the table hours ago had still not been touched, and Otogi was making no attempts whatsoever to take it.

        So it was of no real surprise that Yami no Malik was getting more than a little bit steamed, which wasn't really a good thing for him because Otogi just found the whole thing to be plain funny. After all, how often did one get to see the world's self-proclaimed ruler angry enough to blow a fuse? Perhaps it was not in his favor to piss off the sadistic dictator so much, but it was worth all the additional pain that would have been avoided if he had just been intelligent enough to take the damn offer.

        Intelligence, unfortunately, had never been one of Otogi's strong suits, especially when he was too busy proving that he was indeed a masochist deep down inside.

        "How much longer do you think you can hold out for?"

        The question was, oddly enough, spoken with a curious tone that would have made his eyebrows shoot up if it hadn't hurt so much. He settled instead for smiling, an action that probably hurt more than expressing shock through the old-fashioned way.

        Whoever said that it only took less than ten muscles to smile should be promptly cursed to hell and forced to take his current position.

        "Long enough to gain a couple more ugly scars, I suppose," was the overly perky reply. He found himself holding back the sudden urge to giggle, and wondered immediately if he had finally gone insane.

        His father had always said it was bound to happen sooner or later. Whoever would have guessed it would happen sooner than either father or son could predict?

        At least, though, he had the undeniable delight of outlasting his father. Something had to be said of that decidedly undeniable pleasure.

        Either way though, it did not change the fact that Otogi was actually indebted to his father. And not because the old man had taken the time to create and raise him (which he was somewhat grateful for, depending on the time of day and his mood), but because if it was not for him, Otogi might have been stupid enough to take Yami no Malik's offer.

        Which, at least in the long run, would have been a terrible mistake. Even if the psychopath had kept his promise to end the constant pain in exchange for the information about the rebels that he so greatly desired, the consequences of such a betrayal were too much to be simply ignored.

        When he was younger, and more prone to blindly trusting his father in times of utter stupidity, he had learned first hand never to believe in people keeping their promises. For even in those rare cases when they did somehow manage to carry out their half of the bargain, something always happened to make the poor, trusting fool wish he was never born.

        Take the current choice being laid before him now, for example. Even if Yami no Malik honestly did stop tormenting him, he would have to deal with the insufferable guilt of giving up his lover, friends, comrades, and quite possibly the rest of the world to Yami no Malik.

        Well, perhaps guilt was not quite the right word. Guilt wasn't even a word in Otogi's vocabulary, since he usually had better things to do than feel sorry or bad for the dead. Unless the concept of heaven and hell, angels and demons, and all the other ideas of reincarnation were true, it wasn't like the dead were going to be very interested in blaming people for their untimely death. In fact, they weren't going to be doing much except rot. So why worry?

        No, it was a more pragmatic side that kept him from refusing Yami no Malik's advances. After all, in the perhaps _highly unlikely case that Kaiba and company won the seemingly endless battle, things would not exactly fare well between Kaiba and the traitor, lovers or not._

        Although now that he thought of it, perhaps lovers was also a bit too intimate to be the correct word. He was beginning to suspect that Yami no Malik had had a point when he had labeled the raven-haired man 'Kaiba Seto's fuck toy'.

        What was the point of denying the truth?

        Part of that truth was that Otogi would in no way benefit from deciding to end his own misery by bleating all of Kaiba's meticulous plans like a sheep.

        (Not that he would have been able to anyway. He had no idea what Kaiba would do now that the vegetable-pharaoh had been rescued.)

        And even if Yami no Malik fulfilled his promise by slitting his throat with the blood-stained Sennen Rod (it was better than having it in different places), suppose the afterlife did exist? Next thing he knew, Kaiba would be kicking his ass all around non-denominational hell.

        For the oddest reason, he did not relish that idea. So it really was of no surprise that he kept his mouth shut, except when he was screaming loud enough to raise the dead.

        Not a bad idea, now that he thought of it. But he stopped thinking about it in order to attend to more important things, like the pain that was quickly overtaking his senses.

        Like all the lessons his loving father had passed onto him, this one had come with a terrible price. A price he easily could have lived without, thank you _very_ much.

        Still, an army of dead was rather appealing.

        Especially when the dead cannot die again.

~@*

        Neither corridor looked appealing, to be frank. One was dusty and in need of a cleaning job from (Weeks? Months? Years?) of neglect. The other was dark and smelled oddly of blood, most likely from the abuse.

        Two corridors, but he did not know which to choose. He knew where they led, and he knew that he could not face the contents of either.

        _It does not really matter._

        He looked up, and his voice cracked as he asked, "Black Magician?"

        _Is that supposed to be a question?_

        There was a time, so very long ago, that he would have been ashamed of such weakness. He no longer remembered that time. And there used to be a time, not so long ago, that he would have tried to improve on his weakness.

        But alas, that time had disappeared when Yuugi had left him. And all that had been left was an empty shell, a mere shade of a human.

        Granted, he might not have been a great human without Yuugi. Yet why would such a petty thing matter? He could have at least retained the gift (or curse, depending on one's point of view) of humanity, rather than give it up like a scared little mouse.

        He should not have let this happen. But it was too late for that, wasn't it?

        _Why are you still here?_

        He shivered.

        "I don't know which door to choose."

        It was an excuse, and a poor one at that. Both knew it, but one refused to acknowledge it.

        _Does it matter?_

        He wasn't trying to be cruel. Yami knew that. But the words cut deep, although he could not be sure why. It was not as if he really cared, yet a brief pang of guilt flashed through him briefly.

        "I don't know."

        The words made him feel bad, even as he spoke them. Now they hung there, taunting his weaknesses, his ignorance. He knew that he should have been better. It was expected of him.

        But _why_ was it expected of him?! Why was this happening to _him? He had never asked for these burdensome expectations, never asked anyone to depend on him._

        It wasn't fair.

        The tears came then, angry and desperate as they left trails running down his face. He barely noticed them, except to briefly wonder how he had come to be so damn pathetic.

        He didn't want this. He didn't want the weight of the world on his shoulders. Why did they bother to save him? What was he supposed to do? What did they want from him so badly that they had been willing to sacrifice their own to rescue him?

        _Why are you crying?_

        Once upon a time, Mahaado might have reached out to comfort his pharaoh. But Mahaado had been weak then. That was apparent when Bakura killed him and then his pharaoh. No, Mahaado was dead, just like his pharaoh. And all that was left in his place was the Black Magician, who had no comfort to offer to anybody.

        Well, almost.

        Silently, wordlessly, he shoved Yuki into his pharaoh's arms. Yuki grumbled, displeased with the harsh treatment, but that was of no concern to him.

        Only duty was left in place of love.

        _He wanted you to have it. A gift. You abandoned it when you ran away, but it has been here for you regardless. It will always be here for you, no matter what you do. Just like him. Just like Yuugi. He's been waiting for you all this time, and it is past time you repaid him the favor._

        "Yuugi's gone."

        It was the first time in a long while he had said the name out-loud.

        _What are you holding then? Cotton, fur, yarn, and thread? It's more than that pharaoh. Even you should know that. Even you cannot forget love as strong as that when it is in your arms._

_        Do nothing if it is what you want, pharaoh. I cannot stop you. I can only attempt to guide you so that you may choose correctly._

_        There are two doors. But they both lead to the same fate. It is not a matter of which door you choose; rather, you must choose if you will_ open a door.__

~@*

        He didn't miss Ryuuji, really. He didn't have any reason to do so. The green-eyed man was nothing more than a lovely distraction from the harsh realities of life, and thus did not need to be missed.

        That is what he told himself, at least, in an attempt to alleviate the pain that he felt from his loss.

        Except it had already been established that he didn't miss him.

        What did it matter that there was something fascinating about his lover? Something alluring, something that (if he was truthful with himself) he simply could not live without.

        Live….

        He didn't want to accept his love. Really, he didn't. But what did it matter? Anyone with half a brain and minimal observation skills knew there was something going on between the two.

        Anyone except him and Ryuuji, both of which were convinced it was nothing more than a business arrangement.

        Seto bit his lip as he looked into the mirror. It was cracked. Broken. Yet the number of times he had woken to see Ryuuji preening before it as if nothing was wrong.

        That was Ryuuji for you. He didn't seem to get the message that the world was most likely coming to an end, too busy combing his hair.

        His appearance today, however, was haggard. Tired.

        If he lied to himself, he would say that he was worried because of what Ryuuji might say to Yami no Malik. The secrets, those damnable secrets, which might very well damn them all to hell.

        Unfortunately for his sanity, he was sick of his lies. He wanted, desperately, the truth.

        Even if it meant that he would have to face the fact that he had come to love and depend on Ryuuji.

~@*

        And from the depths of the chosen room, a voice called out to him.

        "Mou hitori no boku?"

[18] You get a cookie if you know where that comes from. :)


	8. Adieu

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Notes: Felt guilty. Will write. Everyone who is appreciative of this fact should go thank Nalan-san. For more than one reason.

Beta-reader notes: No they shouldn't.  My apologies for taking so long to beta.

Notes: Well, it took me a long time to write anyway. But also, thanks to Nalan-san for ideas, inspiration, and beta-ing. And thanks to Ninetails-chan for pestering me.

_Been a fool, been a clown_

_Lost my way from up and down_

_And I know, yes I know_

_And I see in your eyes_

_That you really weren't surprised at me at all_

_Not at all_

_And I know by your smile it's you._

        The door slammed behind him before he could escape.

        "Mou hitori no boku?"

        His large red eyes darted around the room as he unconsciously began to step back, fully expecting to walk right back to the door. As soon as that happened, he would open the wretched door and escape back into the hallway, escape back into his empty shell, escape back into the world that was just so suffocating in the way it forced its way around him and didn't let him breathe.

        But no matter how far he kept backing up, he just kept going. There was no end to this room… or was it because he wasn't going anywhere? Panicking, he tried to run, only to encounter the sensation of his legs being weighed down so that he could no longer move at all.

        Instead, he could only stand there, frozen in such shock that his face became twisted in a combination of pain and inescapable fear.

        "Mou hitori no boku?"

        It wasn't the right room. _It wasn't the right room_. Why was he here, of all places? He shouldn't be here… he shouldn't! This was _his_ room, with the labyrinths and mazes that had oftentimes made him want to sit down and cry from the frustration of not being able to find his way around. He had been trapped there for so long yet was still confused by the paradoxes that the room provided.

        Yet all those horrible memories were nothing compared to the person he had betrayed and eventually led to death.

        The person he had been hoping to avoid by entering this room.

        Because it _wasn't_ the right room. It just wasn't the right room! _He_ wasn't supposed to be in this room… _he _was supposed to be in the other room. The room that he hadn't entered. The room that was not this one.

        This _wasn't the right room._

        "Mou hitori no boku?"

        A high-pitched sound that seemed to be a cross between a whimper and a moan escaped him as he fell to his knees, wine-red eyes that had been wide with shock closing as he tried to block out the words. He could feel the tears starting to well up in his eyes… tears of frustration and desperation.

        It was so odd. For so long, those were the only words he had wanted to hear. For so long, he had wanted nothing more than to open his eyes and see his host looking down at him with those large, almost childlike eyes that always made him smile despite himself.

        And now… now that he was being _faced_ with the actualization of that possibility, he wanted nothing more than to scream.

        What had happened to him? What was wrong? Why was this happening, of all times? Isn't this what he wanted? Isn't this what he had dreamed of?

        Why was he so afraid?

        He had dropped Yuki in his escape attempt, and he now had nothing to hold onto. So as he shook his head, trying his best to convince himself that this was some type of twisted nightmare brought on by Yami no Malik… he held himself. After all, who else would do that for him?

        Who else ever would have done that for him except….

        Gently, somebody pried his arms open, and he could feel the soft warmth of Yuki's fur brushing against his cheek.

        And when he looked up – looked up because he could do nothing else – he found himself looking into a tender smile.

        "… aibou?"

_Don't care for me, don't cry._

_Let's say goodbye, adieu._

_It's time to say goodbye, I know that in time_

_It will just fade away, it's time to say goodbye._

        Anzu paused as she walked by Yami's room. The door was, as usual, closed.

        Few people had ventured into the room since the rescue mission. Kaiba was one, of course, although lately he had been avoiding the room. Which was no big loss, as the only thing he tended to do when he visited the once-pharaoh was to yell or glare coldly. Shaadii, on the other hand, never let on what he was doing. What he did was his business and his business only, and besides… nobody really seemed to understand what he did even when he did bother to explain it.

        Usually, she walked by the room without pausing. She had missed the pharaoh terribly, but the memories were still too fresh and painful to confront.

        She had loved Yuugi, and the pharaoh. She had loved them both as a single entity and beings in their own right, and often the feelings had become so intertwined and confused that she could only stare at them both in wonder. And even now, so many horrible years later… the feelings were still the same. The feelings were still there, and she knew they always would be there even if they were never returned.

        That was, more or less, the only part of Mazaki Anzu that had never changed. Oh, there were still shadows of the person she had once been. Sweet Anzu, who comforted those in need and helped her friends, who stood up to her enemies and wanted nothing more than to be the very best person she was.

        What a shame that this idealistic child who tended those hopes as one would care so lovingly for a beautiful rose had watched in denial as all the pretty petals fell away and the leaves shriveled, leaving only a stem twisted and covered in thorns.

        She had been such a wonderfully happy person too.

        And then she had grown up in the span of two weeks.

        As the months progressed, the gleaming white armor of purity that she had once wrapped herself in so carefully became chipped and covered in holes so that everything good could leak out and everything dark could slip in. The cheerful disposition had given way to impatience. The caring personality had given way to cynicism. Love and friendship had given way to hate and disgust… hate and disgust of what she had been and of what she had become.

        Oh, she hated herself so much for that.

        She knew, of course, that this battle had changed everyone for the worse… as long as those people weren't already dead, of course. Everyone had become embittered, spiteful, angry, and disgusted with everyone else.

        So why should she be any different? Why should she _care_ that she was the same as them… that she too had become somebody who hated everyone and everything? 

        She cared because she had always been the happy one. Of everyone, shouldn't she have been the one to find some way of overcoming it? She was Anzu, after all. She was supposed to be the happy one, the kind one… the person who _would not change_ no matter what happened.

        But she _had._

        Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself pushing the door open and entering the room. Like all the others, it was small and bare of any homeliness. The only thing that was there, in fact, was a bed and the usual sheets and pillow.

        Oh, and there was the pharaoh too. If you happened to count that.

        For a moment, she just stood there, staring at him. He stared back, except it was obviously that he wasn't seeing her. His eyes were somewhat cloudy, and he never blinked.

        She took a step forward, but he didn't move. And she took another step, and then another… until finally, she was standing right in front of him.

        And still he did not see her.

        Suddenly, she felt like doing what Kaiba had been doing – felt like screaming and demanding for him to wake up. But she knew deep down that such actions would do nothing to rectify the situation that they were in, so she settled for continuing to stand there.

        "He's waiting for you in there, you know."

        The words had slipped out before she could stop them, and the next she knew they were practically spilling over each other in their haste to come out.

        "He's always been waiting for you in there… I know he has. You would have done the same thing for him too, right? You wouldn't have left him alone. I know you wouldn't. It's not your fault… not your fault that he died. You know that, right? Right? He wouldn't blame you… even if everybody else did, he wouldn't blame you for that. He knows you tried your best… what else could have been done? You tried to save him, you didn't mean for any of this to happen. So you don't have to act like it, you know? You don't have to act like it's your fault… because it really isn't. It just… isn't. You have to let go, Yami. _You have to let go._"

        Even to her, they sounded so empty and pathetic that she would have cried if she had any tears left to give.

        "So won't you come back? We need you here. We need you to help us. There's… there's already been so many people lost. And even those who aren't gone aren't ever going to be the same. Jyounouchi… Jyounouchi misses her so much, you know? He seems so lost without her. And Honda… Honda's the same way. It's like he doesn't even exist anymore, with everything that's happened. Otogi's trapped, Kaiba-kun doesn't seem to know what to do anymore… nobody does. We need you so much…."

        Unconsciously, she found herself reaching out to take his hand. It was so cold, so limp, as she curled her long, slim fingers around it and squeezed it.

        And that was when she finally noticed the tears dripping down his cheeks.

_I stand alone and watch you fade away like clouds_

_High up in the sky_

_I'm strong and so cold_

_As I stand here alone_

_Goodbye, so long, adieu._

        "Seto?"

        No one had ever used his first name except Ryuuji. No one was ever presumptuous enough to take that final step towards intimacy.

        "Yes?"

        "What are you thinking about?"

        "Why do you ask?

        "It's rare for you to just stand around with a dazed look on your face. It makes you look rather stupid, really."

        "Hm."

        "You know how much I hate it when you do that. Are you going to answer my question?"

        "No."

        Ryuuji had shaken his head and left him alone when this incident had happened. Ryuuji loved Seto, really… but when the blue-eyed brunette withdrew within himself like this, there was simply no reaching him. Ryuuji had tried before, of course, but there was no point in fighting a losing battle.

        Right?

        Sometimes, when he reflected on this incident like he was doing now, Seto wished that Ryuuji had tried to stay. Wished that Ryuuji had made him explain his thoughts. He didn't know why he felt that way, but he couldn't help but think it anyway.

        He wished for many things, of course, and half of them didn't make sense.

        But this one?

        _This _one, he wanted so badly now that it hurt.

        He knew, at that moment, that he had been doing this for too long. Trying to be strong when really… _really_, he wanted nothing more than to hold onto Ryuuji and tell him all those things which he couldn't say if he wanted to keep his icy demeanor.

        But did any of that matter _now_?

        _"Are you ever going to be brave enough to tell me that you love me?"_

        The words had been spoken in such a light, teasing tone, but he hadn't even smiled at the words. Hadn't even known he was supposed to.

        But _now_… a half-smile made its way onto his face. Oh, Ryuuji would love to see him now, hmm? Ryuuji would probably laugh and give him a chaste kiss with a very loud, very annoying 'I told you so'… and the only thing he would do was laugh.

        And kiss him back, of course.

_Oh how I love you so, lost in those memories_

_And now you've gone_

_I feel the pain, feeling like a fool, adieu._

        Yuugi hadn't changed at all since the last time he had been seen by anyone, and such it made Yami wince as he looked at that smile. There was no way he could doubt that it was Yuugi… the smile was too familiar, too much like him. It was something that nobody could ever imitate to this extent.

        Him, on the other hand… he was almost surprised that Yuugi hadn't been frightened off. Especially when one considered the state of his own appearance… those years of being imprisoned by Yami no Malik had done nothing for his looks, to say the least, and he no longer looked anything like the once proud game king.

        "… aibou?"

        For a moment, the teen looked like he was ready to say something. Yami himself looked more than ready to embrace whatever was to be said… but the words never came. Instead, Yuugi's smile just grew sad as he pressed Yuki closer, the small seal looking so delicate even against the thin and almost wasted body of his master.

        Master was such a strong word though, wasn't it?

        "… aibou… I'm sorry… I'm…."

        Yuugi never said anything. He just looked at the spirit – although weren't the roles switched now? – and shook his head ever so slightly.

        The expression on Yami's face looked pained as he continued to stare at Yuugi with such wonder and a hope that had been dead within for so long. And no matter how hard he tried to do what Yuugi had asked him to do – to stop – he couldn't. He _had_ to tell Yuugi that he was sorry. He _had_ to tell Yuugi that he hadn't meant for this to happen. He _had _to….

        _It's not your fault._

        Yami jerked as he stared at Yuugi, but Yuugi hadn't said anything. He just watched Yami with that patient expression tinted with a sadness that was unspeakable.__

        "Yes it is…. If I… if I hadn't been searching for my memories in the first place, none of this would have happened. Malik… he wouldn't have… and you wouldn't have… you wouldn't have-!"

_        You didn't mean for any of this to happen. So you don't have to act like it, you know? You don't have to act like it's your fault… because it really isn't._

        Yuugi still hadn't said anything, but the words echoed around him so loudly that he wanted to cover his ears and beg for it to stop.

        "… aibou… I… you…"

        No matter what was being said… no matter what Yuugi was silently begging him to do, it wouldn't stop. It just wouldn't stop. He wanted so badly to….

        What did he want?

        He wanted to reach out and hold his aibou… he wanted to at least _touch_ him, but he knew if he tried then Yuugi would only fade away and leave him here again. Besides, it felt like he was rooted to his place, and he didn't know how to move anymore. The tears were threatening to slip as he clung to Yuki tightly before whispering brokenly, "What am I supposed to do now?"

        The red eyes looked up at Yuugi, allowing the teen to see all the pain that had been within them for so long. The pain of the guilt that had been smothering him all this time… but only because he allowed it to.

        _You have to let go, Yami._

        The guilt had to stop. The pharaoh had to move on. Not to forget, of course, but to move on. To move on as he had not been able to do in the past years, to move on and take his place among the living again. He had to stop blaming himself, stop torturing himself like this.

        He knew that. Yuugi knew that. Everyone knew that.

        But the _ability_ to do such a thing was so much more difficult to grasp than the concept behind it.

        _You have to let go_.

        But he didn't want to. He didn't want to, and he didn't even know if he knew how. He had spent so long wallowing in guilt that it would take so much more than a few words to pull himself back together… but then again, this was…

        Yuugi.

        He was crying, by this point. Yami no Malik would have loved to see him in this position, but he didn't care anymore. The pressures were becoming too much. He knew what to do but not how. He wanted so badly to beg for forgiveness but he was not allowed. He needed to do this _one last thing_ for his aibou, but he simply couldn't.

        He just… couldn't.

        As he knelt there, trying so hard to make sense of everything, Yuugi knelt down next to him.

        _They need you._

        For a long time, he didn't reply as he continued to stare down at the floor helplessly. The last sentence… everything prior to this voice had just been words, but the _last_ sentence….

        It was Yuugi.

        The wine-red eyes, framed by the soft gold bangs, finally lifted up to look at him. One hand started to reach out to touch him, but before it could reach him, small hands clasped around the hand and Yuugi pulled it against his face.

        He could almost feel the warmth, even though there was really nothing there.

        And for the first time in so long, he closed his eyes and smiled. It was a small smile, resigned, bitter, and sorrowful… but it was a smile.

        "Wakatta ze, aibou. [19]"

_My love for you burns deep_

_Inside me, so strong_

_Embers of time we had_

_And now here I stand lost in a memory._

        When Yami opened his eyes, he found himself looking into large blue eyes.

        "Anzu?"

_I see your face and smile_

~ "Adieu", Cowboy Bebop _Blue_

Commentary (part 8)

[19] I understand.

Hopefully, the next chapter won't take as long to come out… but I really can't make any guarantees. I really haven't decided how much longer this story is going to be, but I think I'm going to try and wrap it up three chapters or so.


	9. Prophecy

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Notes: Sorry for the wait. Again.

Many thanks to Nalan-san for beta-reading this chapter, and putting up with my nonsense. :)

        Yami no Yuugi did not smile when he found himself looking into Anzu's large blue eyes. Instead, he looked more confused than ever about her presence, but it didn't matter. Anzu was doing enough smiling to make up for his lack thereof.

        She also did enough crying and screaming to alert the rest of the building of the unexpected development, so it was no wonder that approximately twenty seconds later, Honda and Jyounouchi found themselves staring into a room with no little sense of wonder in their eyes. It didn't take long from there for them to also be wrapped up in a rather ecstatic and twice disturbing hug-fest, although Yami gingerly stayed apart from the rest. He watched them for a while, and then he turned to stare at the wall – which, except for him, was the only object in the room that wasn't about to become hysterical.

        Nobody noticed, but again, that was okay. He was used to nobody noticing what he did, and he couldn't help but like it quite a bit more than having every one of his moves scrutinized by the general population. Or anybody in particular. It was such a change from his previous position where _everyone_ watched him that he had no doubt some thought him odd to be acting this way. But perhaps it was because he had been in the spotlight so long that he had needed to get away and discover the wonders of solitude. This way, at least, he could think… and it had been so long since his thoughts had been good instead of downright depressing. Been a long time since he'd had any change in the consistency of his thoughts, which had for so long revolved around the blame he took on for the continuing destruction of the world. That had been the only thought that Yami no Malik had allowed to let him have, and in a way, the only thought that he himself would allow him to have.

        It was disturbing to realize, now that he was in a somewhat clearer state of mind, that the reason why he had been so ensnared was more of his own guilt than anything the psychopath had really done to him. Yami no Malik hadn't helped, certainly, and it had been his fault that Yuugi was… gone. But knowing that had never been enough because Yuugi was never supposed to be gone in the first place, and thus the constant thought of guilt and self-hatred soon because the only thing that would process in his fragmented mind.

        It was still there, of course. And his mind was still in those pieces. He would never be able to let go of it, even if he had tried, and he would never be able to put the pieces back together perfectly . But beyond that, there was something else. And that something else was allowing him, for the first time, to see everything a little bit more clearly than he had before.

        So while everyone else let themselves be blinded by happiness, he quietly locked away all those tedious emotions and started to think. And crazy as it sounded, he currently recognized the wall as the most sane thing in the entire room.

        "He's awake."

        Shaadii's calm observation was barely acknowledged by Kaiba, who grunted and went back to tinkering with a small machine that he had been in the middle of creating when Shaadii had taken the time to interrupt him. His inventions were the backbone of the small rebellion, and he had an excellent success rate.

        Unfortunately, he had an equally good rate of failure, and those were the kinds of things that they really couldn't afford. He wished that they could have a change to test his little toys, but since they were so scrapped for materials, such musings remained nothing more than wisps of air that cluttered his brain with useless things.

        Of course, it wasn't like he was the only person who wished they worked all the time. The poor people who got blown up or killed because of his 'failures' probably wished the same thing too, although usually they didn't have enough time to muse about such things. And even if they did, they usually concentrated on other things, most significantly the pain that they were probably feeling at the time.

        Nobody ever said this job was easy.

        The silence that followed the comment was deafening, but Kaiba didn't mind. He liked the quiet, which was strange since his boyfriend was one of the loudest people in the entire station. And it seemed like he was quite proud of this accomplishment too, considering how often Otogi would prance around annoying the hell out of everyone although he really did have a nice voice to listen to.

        Sidetracking.

        Again.

        But anyhow, Otogi was a general pain in the ass, and Kaiba usually didn't have the patience to deal with such things. So it was pretty strange that the two could even bear to be in the same room together, although they had really never bothered to think about it anyway.

        Then again, quite a bit of the time that they were together didn't exactly involve speech anyway….

        That was, as pleasantly blissful at it was, a different story, and thus a complete deviation from the topic on hand. Although he wasn't quite sure what that topic was. Still, considering how nothing had happened in the past couple of minutes, he figured that Shaadii was waiting for him to say something, so he decided to make his words short and sweet.

        Well, short, at least, if not sweet.

        "I know," he replied, never taking his eyes off of the small machine he was working on. "It's hard not to know with the way Anzu is screaming like that."

        "It's time."

        Time. Time for _what_, pray tell? Time to go out there on a suicide mission? Time to go get themselves killed? What? What did it matter if the pharaoh woke up or not? He was still useless, and he was still a liability. They had risked their lives for this… this… _person_, and more than one of them was paying the price for it. So what was it time _for_?

        Still never moving his eyes, Kaiba continued to work. And Shaadii continued to watch him, but a part of him wished that he hadn't when the next words made themselves known.

        "What is his purpose?"

        Shaadii stared. It wasn't a surprised stare because that would take away from his mysterious aura, but it was a stare nevertheless.

        "You told us to save him. I didn't ask questions then because it wasn't like we had anything else to do. Everything we've done to this point have just been annoyances – it's like Yami no Malik is playing a game with us and he knows that he can take his time since we can't really do much damage. This mission of yours was supposed to be something more… a chance to really accomplish something… but so far I haven't seen anything come out of it. And considering what that bastard got in exchange, I don't really think he cares that the pharaoh is gone. Which is good because he doesn't know why we rescued him in the first place, but at the same time, I still don't know why the hell we're doing this. I don't believe in this occult crap, but that's all that seemed to be working these days. So I did what you asked me to. And I lost something very important. But what does that matter? What's the life of one person if it can save the rest of the world? So again, I didn't ask questions. It's different now, though. I want to know why the hell you told us to do this, why he's needed, and why the hell is any of this is happening. And don't give me any of your crap about how it can't be told or I don't need to know because I _do_ need to know why this world's gone to shit and how the play-king is supposed to do anything about it when he can barely stand on his own is beyond me."

        Shaadii never flinched throughout this speech – a commendable accomplishment – and his expression never changed either. Once Kaiba had finished his completely monotone words, he just eyed him for a moment longer before turning around and walking out of the room.

        Kaiba didn't stop him, although a part of him wanted to. Well, a part of him wanted to throw something preferably large and heavy at the Egyptian's head which would be sure to stop him, but he managed to resist somehow.

        A commendable accomplishment.

        He didn't even bother to look up when he heard the door shut, although he did set aside the pieces that he'd working with.

        And when he finally did look up, he stared at the wall.

        The wall couldn't answer any of his questions, but he didn't have any questions to ask it in the first place.

        It felt like he was drowning.

        Strange way to die, he thought blearily. Drowning, that is. What were you supposed to do as the water closed in around you, and you tried so desperately to get a breath of that life-sustaining oxygen only to realize that there wasn't really any around you? That you had nothing else to do but wait to die?

        Except that wasn't really right because there was oxygen in the water. This fact was emphasized by the fish swimming by, although there were no fish in this particular place. Probably was his imagination, which would make sense since everyone seemed out to get him. Why not his mind too, making him realize that what he needed most was around him, but not in any usable form?

        Worst of all, he was going to be dying in approximately five inches of water. This did not sit well with him, especially since he didn't want future generations (assuming there were going to be any, but Otogi liked to look on the bright side of things when the dark side was only going to depress him further) to remember him as the idiot who drowned in _five inches of water_. Not that it was exactly his choice, but it would be embarrassing nevertheless.

        So he struggled, but there wasn't really much struggling to do. He wasn't exactly in any state to be doing so, and even if he had been the presence of several armed and extremely muscular guards against one rather skinny individual who depended on dice more than anything was never very good odds.

        It was laughable, actually.

        Very laughable.

        Especially when two of them were holding you down.

        Okay, so maybe it wasn't that funny.

        He could probably see them if he tried to, but he had other worries at the moment. Most of them revolved around surviving, although he had no idea why he would care for that. Life wasn't exactly a picnic; compared to this lovely romp through real-life purgatory, death would probably be rewarding.

        But he didn't really want to die without punching Kaiba in the face and screaming '_I told you so!_' even though he didn't really have anything that he could claim he knew. But he was sure that he would find something, and then he would enjoy rubbing it into Kaiba's face.

        And somewhere, in the back of his mind, somebody wondered why he was having these thoughts.

        They were strange thoughts to be having while you die.

        But then again, what kind of thoughts were you _supposed_ to have? It wasn't like anybody could write a book on it – usually if they were in the process of dying, they ended up in a state where being talkative was one of the last things on their mind. Thinking was too, now that he thought of it, but still….

        The next thing he knew though, he was being quite happily dragged back out of the water, which he would have noticed was a bathtub if he had been in the right state of mind.

        He hadn't been in the right state of mind, so he hadn't noticed, and now that he was out of there, he decided that he really didn't care.

        There were, after all, more important things to worry about, like the appearance of the psychopath that was currently having the time of _his_ life making _your_ life a living hell.

        Not to imply that he was actually coherent enough to realize that Yami no Malik had come to supervise… whatever the hell this was. He was still too busy trying to breathe and even _seeing_ was becoming a bit of a task.

        And not a very pleasant one at that, since by the time he was able to see again, the only thing he could see ended up being the last person he ever wanted to see again.

        Yami no Malik looked down at him, an amused expression tainting his lips. It was better than seeing his blood there, at least, so he wouldn't have said anything even if he was in a position to. Instead, he just lay there where the guards had dropped him, looking back at the spirit resignedly.

        "They're coming."

        Otogi blinked at him but didn't say anything. It was a kind of observation that didn't really leave any room for things to be said.

        "They will all come, I think. Except Shaadii, but he never amounted to much. I will hunt him down later, once this is over. The others though, they will come. Perhaps even the pharaoh, who knows? But what will he be able to do? He is still weak, just as everyone else.

        "It will end then. Once they lose, I will have nothing to hold me back. And they will lose because they have always lost before, and now they are fewer in number. But despite that, they will try again anyway because they have nothing else to lose, and this will be their final stand.

        "Pathetic."

        He felt obliged to say something in defense of his friends and comrades at arms, but he couldn't really think or anything. Perhaps he could have pointed out that _they_ were not the only ones, as there were the men and women that trained daily in their small complex. But perhaps he knew as well as anyone that those people were still too green, as everyone who was experienced had been sacrificed on the suicidal trips through the enemy land. Everyone except _them_, but wasn't Yami no Malik right? What did they amount to, in the end?

        Nothing.

        He didn't really want to say anything that benefited the spirit, so he just stayed silent as Yami no Malik crouched down so that if he was sitting up, they would have been face to face.

        "I'm not worried about the girl, or the two boys. My men and monsters can take care of them. And the pharaoh can be easily taken care of, with the right decisions. He only needs to have one sentence said to unbalance him – one reminder of the burden he carries on his shoulders – and he will fall.

        "Then the only one left is _him_."

        There was no question about who _him_ was. There was only one person left.

        Otogi didn't move when Yami no Malik reached out for a lock of his hair, twisting it idlely around a finger in a way that resembled _himself_ so much that he wanted to scream.

        "But I have the perfect person to take care of him, don't I?"

        When nothing was said, the spirit pulled harshly on his hair, and he winced. What, did the evil dictator actually expect an answer? For a sudden, awe-inspiring moment, he wondered if he should have been writing down notes about everything that had just been said. It wasn't everyday that your greatest enemy spilled his evil plans to you, although there wasn't much to do about it since he was here instead of with his friends.

        Yami no Malik was still looking down at him, his movements oddly… curious. Intrigued.

        _Wrong_.

        "Don't I," he repeated more to himself than anybody else, and suddenly the only thing Otogi could feel was the ice running down his spine.

        It had taken relatively little time for the five to prepare, but they had taken everything they needed and left nothing behind. There would be no need to save things, especially if they did not succeed. For the world would end and nobody would have any use for such things, except perhaps the aliens who might one day visit and sell their things as trinkets.

        This was the last stand, the do or die. Whether they won or lost, they would never have to fight again, although one option was preferable to the other. It seemed to Kaiba, however, nothing more than a suicide mission, something for which people died unnecessarily but later were sung about by maidens with fair voices.

        That was the theory, at least.

        He knew of no maidens who worried more about singing than the fact that people had died for nothing more than glory, so he decided to push that to the back of his mind as he glanced around. They were a small, ragged, and pathetic group, and they were the best that humanity had. Which basically meant that humanity was screwed, although he wasn't about to go and voice that when they were about to go get themselves killed. Best to let everyone have an ounce of hope, although he knew that nobody would bother to harbor such delusions.

        Shaadii was with them, although he wasn't going to go. Kaiba hated him the most right now, with the way he couldn't give an answer about whether or not they would succeed. Why bother having a prophet – not that he was one, but he was the closest thing they did have to such a creature – if he couldn't even tell you the most important things?

        Some of the trainees had come as well to see them off, their faces grim and devoid of any emotion. They knew as well that the small group was only leaving to die, and they did nothing about it. What else was there to do – go with them and end up in the slaughter themselves? No, best to bide their time and wait patiently for death, for it was sure to come and receive them with open arms once these five were gone.

        It was five, although one of their number was gone. But that person had been replaced, and now the pharaoh stood a bit to the side staring at the wall. He had nothing remotely resembling a weapon, instead looking remarkably like the child Kaiba had known during Duelist Kingdom and Battle City. The puzzle shone, although it was nowhere near as pristine and glorious as it had been before, instead looking now like a piece of unwanted trash.

        Yami hadn't said anything since his 'awakening', which led Kaiba to wonder if the whole thing had been nothing more than a fluke. Because if that was the case, then they really were going there just to die, and he hated that thought. At least the pharaoh's presence would have been a _reason_, a justification of sorts, but if he had not changed at all, then what was the point?

        Shaadii was saying something now, and he listened with only half an ear. It was the usual stuff, but it didn't really matter him because he knew what he was going to do as soon as he got there. He knew what he had to do, and he didn't really care about what anybody else had to say about the whole sordid affair. It was his time to do something for himself, and since he was probably going to die anyway, he at least wanted to be in the presence of somebody he loved.

        He could admit that now, at least.

        "Kaiba."

        The voice was soft, hoarse. The brunet looked down at him sharply, as if he couldn't believe that Yami would even dare approach him.

        _So he can speak,_ his mind bit sardonically, but he chose to keep watching the pharaoh, waiting for something pertinent to be said.

        It amazed Kaiba that the spirit of the puzzle – was he still considered a spirit now that he had permanent possession of Yuugi's body though? – could look so calm. It wasn't the dazed, unconscious calm that he'd been victim to when the group had brought him here, but one that was deadly and focused. One that was remarkably like his….

        "The sun will rise tomorrow."

        He opened his mouth to ask Yami what the _hell could that have meant_, but by then the pharaoh had lost interest in the whole thing and withdrawn back into himself, leaving Kaiba alone with those five words that were so easy to understand yet completely incomprehensible at the same time.

        He thought about that for a moment, trying to figure out what the significance of the phrase was.

        _The sun will rise tomorrow._

        Idiot. Didn't he know that the sun would never rise again? Not while _he_ was around, at least, and he was going to be around for quite a while it seemed….

        Didn't he know that it wasn't right to get people's hopes up?

        Did he even care?

        Upon failing to come up with an answer, Kaiba decided they were all going to hell.

        I basically wrote that all in 2 days. The problem was that those 2 days were spaced reeeeaaaaallllly far apart.

        Go me.

        So, anyhow, in reference to the future… I'm planning on one more chapter and an epilogue, although the next chapter will be very long.

        I apologize ahead of time for the wait that is to come.


	10. Sunrise

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

Notes: I'm sorry it took me this long to get this story done, but on the upside this is the last chapter with the exception of an epilogue that is already complete. :)

And an apology for the lack of POV shifts in the last chapter… my usual section breaks all ended up becoming symbols that pleasantly decided not to show. Hopefully the new one doesn't get completely decimated too….

Many, many thanks to Nalan-san for beta-ing this. :D

"You can come in if you like. They're already gone."

The Black Magician frowned but obeyed, sliding into the room where Shaadii sat at an empty table, drinking tea. There was another chair with a filled cup, but the mage ignored it in favor of standing. He did, however, take a moment to set down a small white seal in such a way that Yuki would be drinking the tea if only he could bend his head down.

_You are calm._ It was an accusation, not an observation.

Shaadii would have shrugged, except he was calm. "Aren't I always?"

_There was that time with the wild geese._

"You promised never to bring that up again."

_I have been known to break my promises_, the Black Magician said simply before his eyes seemed to sharpen and the topic quickly changed from Shaadii's humiliation to a more pertinent subject. _It was too early, don't you think? He has only just recovered. If you could consider that recovery._

"You knew what I was going to do."

_I did, but that was because you assured me that it was necessary. Now that they are gone, we can be more frank. It doesn't matter anymore anyway – they're gone and it's not as if I could run after them and tell them to come back. Although I should._

"You're much too close to him, Mahaado," Shaadii replied calmly, ignoring the mage's flinch at the use of his name. "Much too close to realize that he isn't a little boy anymore, although you act like he still is."

_I know he is old enough to take care of himself, but what he went through was-_

"-enough for him to know what has to be done," the Egyptian finished quietly.

_And how can you be sure that it isn't too much for him to handle?_ the Black Magician asked sharply.

"He was and is our pharaoh, Mahaado. He knows how to handle responsibility. Why, do you think I put too much faith in him?"

_You give him too much of something, but it is not faith. Nor is it fair._

"The world is not fair," Shaadii reminded him.

_I hate it when you talk like that._

"You hate it because it's true."

xxxXxxx

"I don't like this."

"I doubt very much that Yami no Malik cares about whether or not you like it, Jyounouchi."

The blond glared but did not reply, and Kaiba did not pursue the matter any longer either. He had more important things to worry about anyway, such as the corridor which split into two that was currently before him. He could have sworn that it had not been there the last time, but there was no point in worrying about such things anyway.

At least, that's what he told himself in order to ignore the fact that he didn't know what to do. And since he was the all mighty leader, it was up to him to make the decision. If it had been something that could be justified if he asked someone else, then he would have snapped up the opportunity within a heartbeat. But nobody knew more than he did, and he currently knew nothing.

Damn it.

"Do you think he's noticed us?" Anzu asked worriedly. She tried to keep her voice low, but it was audible and it was a distraction that he did not want to deal with.

"Probably not. I mean, he hasn't sent anything after us yet, right?" Honda replied, and Kaiba couldn't help but grit his teeth slightly at the conversation. It was a distraction. He did not like distractions. He did not want them around.

"But that doesn't always mean anything. I mean, remember that time when-"

_Why can't they just shut up for a moment?_

"Hey, why are we stopped here anyway? What's going on, Kaiba?" Jyounouchi's obnoxiously loud voice asked. Kaiba did his best to ignore it though as he ran through all the detailed maps that he had spent so many nights studying. But he still couldn't figure out where this hallway was, or where its two paths led to.

"Is there something wrong, Kaiba-kun?" Anzu's voice was more compassionate, but it wasn't helping.

"Yeah, what's the hold up?" Jyounouchi again. Didn't he _ever_ shut up?

They could split up. It was a choice that he was reluctant to take, seeing that there were only five of them. It would be best for them to stay together, but then which corridor should they take? What would happen if they went down the wrong one and all ended up dead, or if both were equally important? What then?

They shouldn't split up though.

Damn it, damn it, _damn it._

"You're not going to find this place on any of your maps, Kaiba." The brunet whirled around and found himself looking into Yami's calm red eyes. The others had fallen silent at the sudden words, but Kaiba's eyes merely narrowed as he waited for the former pharaoh to elaborate. "He probably created it."

Honda opened his mouth to ask exactly what the spirit meant by 'created' but Kaiba cut him off. How Yami no Malik had managed to make a hallway in this maze-like building was a meaningless detail, and he didn't care one way or another. "Then which one do we take?"

"You have to take both. He wants something. He wants specific people in specific places."

Kaiba was starting to feel rather angry, although he wasn't sure why, "Then if we listen to you, we'll just be walking into some trap!"

"He'll keep splitting the hallways to get what he wants."

"Well I don't know what the hell he wants anyway, so what does it matter?!"

"Keep your voice down, Kaiba. No one here is deaf."

Kaiba's mouth opened and, as if he was suddenly thinking better of it, snapped shut. After a moment of glaring in which nothing changed, he threw up his arms in exasperation. "Fine! What do you propose in this case?!"

Yami frowned but didn't say anything, and Anzu took advantage of the silence to try and talk some sense into the 'leader', "He's just trying to help…."

"And I'm listening," he snapped.

His listening didn't matter much to the pharaoh though. In fact, it didn't matter at all, for the sudden moment of lucidity had vanished as abruptly as it had come, and now Yami was off in his own little world.

Again.

Kaiba's lips pursed, and finally he shook his head. You have to calm down, he told himself repeatedly. You have to calm down. As much as he didn't like it, Yami was probably right. That, combined with what he knew of Yami no Malik, made him believe that splitting up probably was the best road to take.

"Fine," he growled. "You three will go down the right corridor and I'll go down the other. _You_," he glared at the pharaoh, "can do whatever you please."

"Kaiba-kun," Anzu stated firmly, careful not to let any of her exasperation slip into her words. "You can't go by yourself."

The brunet just snorted and walked away, reflecting as he did so.

There was a time that he would not have listened to the pharaoh. A part of him wasn't sure if that time was completely gone yet. But now, there wasn't any time to waste. He didn't have any idea about what to do, and Yami did. That was enough for him, no matter how much he might dislike it, and now all he could really say was that whatever happened… happened.

xxxXxxx

There sometimes comes a choice, where one has to choose between saving the world or saving a single person… a person that he or she cares deeply for.

Ideally, the world seems to be rather more important than a single person. After all, the lives of many versus simply one life seems like a mathematical dream. Of course that one person cannot compare to all those innocent people who shall perish if the protagonist chooses to be self-centered. Of course nobody could be that important.

But at the same time, what was the point of caring about the world when that one person you could not live without is threatened? Why worry about people you are never going to know and never _wanted _to know when that person who makes your life worth living is gone? What did they matter to you, when they mean absolutely nothing?

It's a selfish thought, it's a selfish decision. And when faced with it theoretically, of course the good of the many outweighs just one.

Reality though, is always different. To lose a person who you care for, to lose a person who made you feel like a person who actually deserved to live… could one really choose to condemn themselves to such a miserable existence?

Some people thought that of all humans, Kaiba Seto would be the one who could proudly proclaim that he did not need anybody in order to live his life to the absolute 'fullest'. And then prove it. But obviously, considering his current predicament, he was showing otherwise.

He had seen what happened to people who lost everyone. It had happened to himself for a while, after Mokuba's death. And he knew, without an iota of doubt, that he did not ever want to be that person again.

The worst thing about it all was that this wasn't his… well, worst problem.

Now, Kaiba had a whole score of problems, starting with the before-mentioned and rather urgent world-wide crisis started by a psychopath with hair like a sunflower. Then there was that small problem of predicaments of the conscience. But right now, his most important task was simply to stay alive.

Unfortunately, that was a little more difficult than it sounded, especially since his other problems were somewhat interconnected with his current situation. Because the person he cared for, the person for whom he was willing to give up the rest of the world for without even batting an eye, was also the person who was trying to kill him at the moment.

It was practically a soap opera. All that was missing was the audience applause.

xxxXxxx

Granted, it hadn't been Otogi's choice when he had fired the gun as soon as Kaiba had entered the room, wounding the brunet with such impeccable aim that there was no way it was human. And it hadn't really been his fault when he had, on a built-in auto pilot mode, attacked his raven-haired lover before he really had an opportunity to analyze the situation. But his brain had simply pointed out the existence of a gun that was dedicated to ending his life, and so he reacted.

Perhaps it would have been better if he had done what he was best known for – namely locking away all those petty emotions and focusing on the big picture. But he was human despite his best attempts at being otherwise, and he allowed his feelings to get in the way.

Kaiba wasn't the type of person to let things get in the way – he preferred to knock over everything in his path in order to reach the goal. It didn't matter how something was achieved as long as it was achieved, and it didn't matter who was hurt in the short run when others would benefit in the long haul. He had lived by that Machiavellian pragmatism for most of his life and it had gotten him to where he was now, but when it finally mattered the most, he could not allow himself to let go of his need to protect.

Duck. Dodge. Never attack, just block and get out of the way.

He couldn't just _hurt_ him.

"Why don't you just attack?"

The voice was so twisted, so unlike the person he knew. And the face was so perfectly devoid of expression that it no longer looked human. And those words he had heard so many times before when he and Otogi had sparred. He'd let Otogi win, of course… the raven-haired man often professed vehement annoyance at the 'kid glove' treatment but there would always be a warm smile even as the complaints still floated in the air. Otogi liked winning, as did Kaiba, and he was willing to let his lover win at a couple small things as long as he kept the overall lead.

But to the question he did not answer, preferring instead to just step out of the way. It wasn't as easy at it looked… Otogi was quick and graceful, and he used it to his advantage. Kaiba could not go on too much longer this way, but at this point there was no way to just turn and run.

"Do you not want to hurt him? Do you not understand that it is the only way you'll be able to win?" Yami no Malik laughed, his words melting into his puppet's monotone voice and becoming something truly haunting in nature. "You can't keep running, Seto. Sooner or later you'll have to face me, and then are you just going to stand there and let me finish you off?"

"What do you want me to do then?"

From his sanctuary, hidden away from the bloodshed happening around him, Yami no Malik started ever so slightly. This hadn't been expected… not completely anyway. He had, at best, expected the brunet to try and talk his way out of a confrontation, but he hadn't expected such a calm question. It seemed so very out of character for Kaiba… but at the same time, it was just like him.

The blond let a slow smile. "Well, if you are going to be so cooperative right now, I would like you to die."

The reaction, again, caused a certain amount of surprise for the psychotic dictator when the brunet chose to simply laugh at the threat on his life, as if it was nothing more than a child's game.

"_Please_," Seto spat out with no little spite. "If you weren't even powerful enough to get the dog to kill the pharaoh's brat all those years ago, what on earth makes you think that you'd be able to get him to kill me? Or has the power and glory of taking over the world from a few inept hands caused you to become so dense, besides going completely psychotic?"

"I've gotten this far, haven't I?"

"I wouldn't call that very far. It's been how many years, and yet you're still dealing with us."

"You forget though, Seto. The person who controlled your… friend was my host, not myself. And even _he_ won out in the end, although Jyounouchi did ultimately break free. But we are talking about two completely different scenarios. Considering what your dear lover has gone through, I would be rather surprised if he could even hear you speaking right now. And even if he was, what difference would it make now? He can't do anything. By the time he wakes up – _if_ he wakes up, and that is a completely different story."

Seto raised an eyebrow. He wondered if Yami no Malik could see him right now – it was something he often wondered about but never exactly asked about. Sometimes he was certain that the other man _could_, but since he didn't like the idea, there was often a healthy dose of skepticism joining his resolution. But if he could see, what was the blond looking at right now? Was he smiling quietly about Seto's rather battered state, or the skepticism that he was just waiting to crush? It was hard to tell, which was precisely why he kept wondering about it.

A part of him was starting to wonder how he could have been stubborn enough to go at this alone. Perhaps if one of the others were here, they would be able to take Ryuuji out in a way that he couldn't.

Except… well, he didn't really want them to do that. He didn't want his raven-haired koi to get hurt, even at the expense of his life and general sanity. Because without that smirk and decidedly loud and annoying personality, he wasn't sure how much farther he would be able to go without completely losing it.

After Mokuba had died, he'd had a mission – revenge. But revenge can only last so long with such little favorable results, and if he had not been able found somebody else to live through, he might have gone the same way as the pharaoh.

Such a thought scared him more than a little, although he was much too prideful to admit it. But seeing the pharaoh – the vegetable pharaoh – had reminded him how perilously close he had come to becoming the same exact thing.

"You're not going to survive if you don't fight back."

"Since when was that any concern of yours?"

He could hear the wolfish smile behind the words, "Oh, it's not. But if you go, he's bound to go rather quickly too, right? So if you're not fighting in order to save him, you might as well not bother. Because no matter what happens, I'm getting rid of both of you. So do whatever you like, Kaiba Seto. He won't be coming out of this alive, even if you tried."

Yami no Malik was right, much to his general annoyance. But that still didn't mean he had to admit it.

"Huh. You really thought this through, hmm?"

"Of course."

"You really shouldn't have bothered."

A slight frown, "What is that supposed to mean."

"For you?" he smirked as he stepped aside. "Absolutely nothing."

The shot that rang out in the emptiness that followed did not stop until it was buried into flesh.

xxxXxxx

Honda wasn't quite sure how he had ended up here, especially when he considered Yami's almost unshakeable belief that Kaiba would be whisked away before anybody could blink. Yet here he was, and what a predicament it was.

He had expected this… considering Yami no Malik, it would have been stupid to think of anything less. Still seeing it rather than just imagining it was a rather big difference – about the same difference between reality and mental illness – so it was a general wonder that he had been able to so calmly shoot one of his friends in the hand.

Kaiba had known he was there. Honda didn't know how the brunet knew, but Kaiba had calmly stepped out of the way right when he was ready. And before he, Otogi, or Yami no Malik could really take in the information, the former CEO was already rushing at the raven-haired man, kicking the weapon away and with no little flair, knocking Otogi out as well.

Honda blinked.

"Cutting it kind of close, huh?" he asked dryly, after a rather obscenely long pause.

Kaiba just shrugged slightly as he leaned down to pick Otogi up, turning to face brown eyes evenly. Honda wasn't sure how he managed to do that with the wound in his shoulder, but Kaiba didn't seem all too concerned about whatever pain he might be feeling at the moment.

"You have good aim."

There was a silence as Honda was suddenly torn between throwing something at the brunet, shooting himself, or doing both of the above. "That's it? That's all you can say after I just shot your boyfriend?"

"Somebody had to do it, and it wasn't going to be me."

The urge to throw something was becoming much stronger, "Well, why not? It is your boyfriend after all. Besides, how did you know I was going to do anything? I could have let you die! I could have killed him! What do you think of that, huh?"

He might have been acting a bit… out of character, but his usually never-ending supply of patience had quickly run drive when being faced with Kaiba's exasperating calm.

Blue eyes stared at him.

"You have good aim," Kaiba repeated before walking out of the room.

Honda glared at him for a moment, but after a few seconds he quickly followed his 'leader'. After all, what other choice did he have? What could he hope to accomplish on his own? No, the best solution was to try and help as much as he could, and hope for the very best. It was what he had been doing for so long, and although the results were rarely good, there really wasn't much else to do.

For he could scream and throw things and curse as much as he wanted to, but it wouldn't bring anybody back. It wouldn't bring back his family or Ryou, it wouldn't bring back Yuugi or his other friends… it wouldn't accomplish anything. And although he wanted to do nothing else then break down, it was necessary to just let the despair grow quietly, and to not allow it to interfere with his duties..

He wasn't the kind of person who wanted revenge. Revenge was momentarily satisfying, but that was it – just one moment. It wasn't enough to make it worthwhile. So he just did what he was told, without any actual goal in view.

It was odd though, wandering throughout life without a real purpose. There didn't even seem to be any duty towards Ryou, no desperate need to do something about his death.

There just… wasn't really anything now.

Honda didn't understand it. He had ceased to wonder about it. But that was not anything new, for most people would have been able to tell that he had reached the point where as a person, Honda Hiroto had long ago ceased to exist….

xxxXxxx

Sometimes, Mazaki Anzu wanted nothing more than to give up.

She never did, but it would have been so much easier if she had. Then she wouldn't have to deal with any of this shit, although she was polite enough not to use such language even when she was currently being attacked by more monsters than she could count. That was a different story though, and it was one of those things better left un-dwelled upon.

Or something like that. After all, it was kind of pointless to keep wishing for things when you knew you couldn't get them. Not to mention the fact that it was obscenely depressing, and it wasn't like she needed any more depressing things in life.

It was starting to get better, although that wasn't exactly difficult. When one is the cheerleader for a group of people who no longer care about anything but survival, any glimmer of life beyond such a concept could be deemed better. Because such things showed that there was still thought, still humanity.

The group that was saving humanity no longer had any of that to show.

So ironic. So ironic that they fought to save something that they did not possess, so ironic that the person who could save them had seemed stripped of such a quality for longer than she cared to remember.

But at the same time, Yami no Yuugi was the only person who seemed to think they could succeed.

Anzu didn't. She was the optimist, but no matter how optimistic she was, there was no way she could believe in any success rate when all they had met was failure. Jyounouchi was too busy blaming himself for something he could never have prevented, and Honda just didn't care anymore. Kaiba cared for only one thing, and who knew what Otogi cared for after everything that happened.

_He_ never said that he believed he would dispel the darkness. He didn't even give a hint of it. But there was something about his demeanor, perhaps a slight return of that confident swagger that had so accompanied him while he was still the great and mighty game king. It wasn't much, and it wouldn't have been noticeable if Anzu had not been there at his 'awakening'. If one chose to call it that, which she didn't.

It was a curse.

She wanted this to end. She wanted all of this to end so badly that sometimes, she wondered why she didn't just end it all on her own. But it was the easy way out, or at least that was what she told herself so that she wouldn't feel like a complete coward.

But why did she even _care_ anymore?

Why did she care about anything, when everything she cared for left without a trace? Why did she bother when her care seemed like nothing more than a curse. She had cared for Yuugi, and now he was gone. She had cared for her ideals, but now they seemed so silly and pale in comparison to the battle they were participating in. She had cared for her friends, but they seemed like ghosts that flitted in and out, ready to disappear at any moment. Everything that had kept her going was gone; everything that she had once found important had ceased to exist.

Was that why she did nothing when Yami turned and walked away? He was the last person she cared for – the last person she could curse with her love. And she knew that if she let him go to wherever he planned on going, he would go the same way as everyone else.

Yet she did nothing. She did nothing because there was nothing she could do, and she did nothing because there was no longer any point.

And it was at that moment when she fell to her knees and cried.

Or at least that was what she would have done if she had still cared.

xxxXxxx

"Save me the rhetoric, pharaoh. You don't sound that good when you're not screaming."

When there was no response, he realized without a doubt that this wasn't the timid creature that he had tormented so long. But it wasn't the game king either, for he had always been quick to rise to the challenge of taunts. Yami no Malik smirked. No matter. Either way, the pharaoh was still the pharaoh, and the guilt of what had happened weighed heavily on him.

Only a couple of words….

"I'm going to stop you."

The words were so quiet, and the creature could not help but laugh. "You delude yourself, but that's nothing new."

Yami shook his head, and a part of the other being began to feel rather… disconcerted. Things were not exactly going to plan, assuming that he ever had one. First he had been too distracted by Kaiba to realize that somebody might have followed him, and he had lost his best chance to get rid of his greatest enemy ever.

Because, well… Kaiba was his greatest enemy. Not this broken boy. Not… the only person who really had any reasonable chance of getting rid of him.

Perhaps he was more than a little disconcerted.

"So. You think you'll be able to stop me? You weren't even able to save your precious host, or have you forgotten that already?"

He had expected a flinch, at least. At most, he had expected a complete collapse. Somewhere in the middle, he believed that Yami would at least stop for a moment – just long enough for him to get the cap off the Sennen Rod and slice through the pale skin. He certainly had not expected the once-pharaoh to just give him a look that confirmed the pharaoh's place as somewhere between the living and dead.

"I didn't forget. I'm not going to."

This was a problem. This was a really, really big problem, although he wasn't about to admit it.

"What do you plan on doing exactly? You're useless, pharaoh. You're a shell. You don't understand your Sennen Item to its fullest extent anymore – you don't know anything. Why should you even bother when you won't be able to change anything?"

And Yami simply replied, "I'm going to seal you."

Yami no Malik recovered himself with a rather commendable composure, "Oh really?"

"Yes."

Sarcasm was decidedly lost on the spirit, for Yami really didn't care anymore what the other person thought. He had a mission, a goal. A promise that he would fulfill because Yuugi had told him to do so. It didn't matter, what happened to him. It didn't matter if he spent the rest of eternity in hell, or if he had to spend excruciating years living with the consequences. Yuugi said they needed him, something he had known for quite a while. He had never been able to act on it, but now he had to. He had spent too long not doing so, and countless people had suffered for his inabilities.

He couldn't bring any of them back. But by fulfilling his promise, it was his best chance of silencing them forever. It was a selfish thought indeed, but what else could he do? How much longer should he let himself be destroyed, and in the process destroy everyone else?

Yami no Malik could see it. He knew Yami no Malik could see it, and so he wasn't really surprised when in a desperate but decidedly futile move, the Egyptian had used the powers of the Sennen Rod on him.

It was an oddly familiar feeling, like his mind was drifting and his worries were gone. It was so tempting to just surrender, but Yuugi's words kept pounding in his mind. They needed him. He had let them all down for too long – he had to make it up to them. It didn't matter what happened to him as long as he managed it, although this time, he knew it was a blessing if he managed to succeed.

Like… like killing two birds with one stone. He could save them all, and he could save himself through his own destruction. The darkness required it. The darkness would not be satisfied with just one life – it had to have one that would make up for the others that it was denied of. That's what this was all about, wasn't it? Yami no Malik was really just a pawn. A powerful pawn, yes, but his purpose was to serve the darkness, not the other way around. Certainly the darkness had given the creature its power in order to fulfill his duties, but it expected something in return. It expected the world, it expected billions of lives to feed on.

And in order to seal it away forever, he had to give himself up. He wasn't the billions of people that the darkness had hoped for, but it wasn't all-powerful yet and it would accept him as a consolation prize. Neither he nor Yami no Malik would ever be able to escape, but really that was okay. He didn't expect to escape, and as long as the Egyptian didn't either, he would have succeeded.

Yami no Malik understood all of this, and he was trying to stop him. The fogginess seemed to grow… tighter, almost, as if it was trying to squeeze out all the coherency that he might have left. Trying to destroy whatever rational thoughts he had left, or perhaps it was not that rational in the first place. Perhaps it was all just wishful thinking, perhaps it was all idealism. Perhaps… he couldn't be sure anymore.

The Sennen Puzzle glowed brightly, its light a familiar warmth that caused him to shudder. It had been so long but now it was all coming back to him – the sharp pain of lucidity that he had been able to avoid when he was in his detached, disassociated state. He had to get rid of it quickly or it would bury him alive again, and then he would have failed.

He _couldn't_ fail again.

"Stop it," Yami no Malik hissed, but by that point, it was just words. It was just… nothing. It didn't matter – none of it did, when compared to his pain. He couldn't even understand it anymore, but he knew that he had to escape.

"No."

Was he really trying to save the world? Or was he simply trying to break free of this world, and the saving the world part was just a part of it that he couldn't avoid?

The words were so desperate, so unlike Yami no Malik. But when he was desperate, when anyone was desperate, he or she would resort to anything in order to stay alive. "You're just killing yourself!"

And it was lovely, wasn't it?

The light was becoming unbearable, blinding and so hot that it seemed to rip through his entire body. It was pathetically easy, really. He just had to have the right mind. After all, it was hard to sacrifice yourself when you still wanted to live.

Yami didn't want to live anymore. He hadn't wanted to live in a really long time, and when the others had brought him out of his foggy haze, he was simply more certain of that fact.

Who cared if it was cowardly? He didn't. He didn't care what people thought about his attitude, and he doubted they would care if they could only be released from the darkness that had for so long threatened to devour their world. He couldn't really do anything about the darkness within themselves but this, at least, he could do.

Yami no Malik was screaming, he realized with detachment. But it stopped shortly as the darkness took back its greatest creature, and soon the darkness would overwhelm the light of the Sennen Puzzle and take him as well. It needed to be appeased, after all. And even though the light was strong, he was not. It wouldn't be too difficult to take him, especially when he was just looking forward to it.

The darkness was growling, and he gave it a bemused smile. If it was going to take him, it might as well hurry about its business. There was only so long he could maintain himself, and if he died, then it would be going back empty-handed. Certainly not something it wanted, was it?

A scowl, but it got the message. Within seconds his lower body was gone, and the darkness was quickly gaining as it moved up his torso with startling speed.

Oddly enough, the light was never diminished as he was devoured. The Sennen Puzzle continued to glow even when the neck its chain rested around disappeared forever, even when those wine-red eyes ceased to exist.

And when the pharaoh was completely gone, as surely as a dream upon waking, the puzzle fell to the ground, shattering upon impact and spilling gold pieces that continued to glow faintly across the floor. Until finally… finally the light died.

xxxXxxx

There was a great deal of screaming involved, and it was decidedly painful to witness, but nobody could have expressed any great sadness when the monsters that had been attacking them suddenly chose to pull a disappearing act. The guards, if there had ever been any, were also gone, leaving Jyounouchi and Anzu standing by themselves with confused expressions on their face.

Jyounouchi turned to look at Anzu, but it was obvious that she had no idea what was going. Somehow he doubted that Yami no Malik had had a sudden change of heart and decided to stop attacking them, but if the psychopath had, he wasn't about to complain.

It took him a rather long amount of time to realize that something was wrong in the scenario, and it took him even longer to realize exactly what that thing was.

"Where's Yami?"

Maybe he shouldn't have asked. Anzu just slowly turned to look at him, her large blue eyes haunted. Their eyes locked for a few minutes, and then he turned away because he couldn't stand to look at it anymore.

"Jyounouchi! Anzu!"

Grateful for the distraction, he turned and saw Honda waving at them from the hallway. Behind him stood Kaiba, and his eyes widened slightly when he realized that the brunet was not alone.

Which, in a way, really wasn't fair.

That was the first thought that ran through his mind, and although he tried to force it out as quickly as he could, it wouldn't leave. Because unless the former CEO was holding a corpse in his arms – very doubtful, all things considered – then… it really wasn't fair.

A part of him didn't even understand the sudden anger in the words. But the rest of him just allowed it to flow over because it didn't want to pretend otherwise.

It wasn't fair that he had lost everyone. It wasn't fair that Anzu and Honda had lost everyone. And then for Kaiba to still have that one person who could keep him from completely losing it....

_It wasn't fair._

"We have to get out of here! The whole place is falling apart!"

Well, of course it was. That much was obvious, especially with the falling rocks, collapsing walls, and a sudden exponential growth in dust particles. But all he could do was stand there as the words continued to run through his mind.

_It wasn't fair._

He might have continued to stand there forever if Anzu hadn't tugged on his arm. Her eyes seemed to reflect his, but she at least could keep herself from letting the thought shut her down.

"We have to go."

Go where?

There was a certain numbness now. It was fairly apparent that Yami no Malik was gone – how else to explain the disappearance of the shadow monsters? But now what? What was he going to do? Where was he going to go to? Why should he even bother leaving, when he could stay here and… do nothing?

His legs started to move, but his mind had yet to catch up. It was still wondering, perhaps selfishly, why he should even bother. Even when he broke into a run to catch up with the others, it was still back in the wreckage, never to emerge again.

xxxXxxx

The pyramid broke, and then he fell.

Malik Ishtal blinked as the glass collapsed, and he seemed to shrug slightly when the ground disappeared and he fell into the darkness.

Ah, it looked like the pharaoh had finally beaten his other self. Took him long enough, really.

He'd always wondered about what would happen at this point. His thoughts had never come up with any good conclusions, but he had wondered and as he fell, he imagined that perhaps nothing would happen. It was quite possible that he would keep falling.

There was no anger, no emotion accompanying such a morbid thought. He couldn't be angry because he deserved this, and he couldn't be secretly pleased because it had been so long that he was perfectly fine sitting back and just waiting. He had done it for so long – what was wrong with doing it for a couple more centuries? It wasn't that big a deal. Lost in your thoughts, time could go by extremely quickly or at a snail's pace if you allowed it to.

He wasn't sure how long he had fallen when suddenly he stopped. It was not a very gentle stop – instead, it felt like somebody had grabbed his arm and pulled him _up_, creating a sensation that felt rather like his shoulder was being dislocated.

Malik opened his mouth to chew out the person who had done it, but he stopped mid-word when he got a good look at that person.

"… neesan?"

She smiled, and he wasn't at all surprised when another arm reached down to grab his free hand, this one much more muscular and accompanied by another familiar face.

He didn't say anything else as Isis and Rishid pulled him up. He didn't let his face say anything either.

But he supposed that if he allowed himself to be honest, the only emotion that he felt was… happiness.

xxxXxxx

They ran, forcing their way through the crumbling building and the confused guards, the monsters who shrieked as they disappeared and the horrors destroyed. Nobody stopped to marvel over the fact that they had won – the only thing on their lives was to escape through the hell that had haunted them for so long.

There was no choice but to go outside, for the portable gateway had been destroyed along with everything else in the complex. It was fairly straightforward though, and when they reached the heavy iron doors that seemed to be standard in evil headquarters, Seto didn't really expect what happened next to ever be able to happen again.

Odd, wasn't it though? He should have known it would have been there, waiting for them, when they finally pushed the doors open.

Distantly, he could hear Anzu crying as the sunlight washed over their tired faces for the first time in… ages. He also knew without looking that Honda and Jyounouchi were probably doing the same thing, although he doubted if they would ever admit it or do it in such a blubbering fashion.

And a part of him thought that perhaps he should join them.

Maybe… maybe if it had been earlier, he might have. Or maybe if it had been later, he might have. But for now, he could only blink into the blinding light as his arms unconsciously tightened around Ryuuji's comatose body.

Without another word, he took a step, and then another. And with each step his pace quickened despite the weight which wasn't really weight, for the problems that had truly been weighing him down for so long had finally slipped away and lay forgotten in the ruins behind him.

It didn't matter to him what happened now. It didn't matter what people chose to do or what not to do because he didn't care anymore. It was over, for him, and in that single moment he had ceased to care for anything except a single person.

So with those thoughts in mind, Kaiba Seto strode in the direction of the light of the new day, and finally left everything else behind.

Ah. Epilogue shall be up in a week or so, along with any ending notes.


	11. Epilogue

Title: Sunrise

Author: Moonlight Reflection

The days had gone by slowly at first, but as the lists of things to do had grown at exponential rates, they rapidly disintegrated into the weeks that melted into the months and years. Kaiba Seto could barely keep track of how much time had passed since the first sunrise of this new life – he couldn't think of another word for it right now, and he didn't want to waste the time and energy it would tae to do so – as he was too busy with rebuilding the world from his little corner of the land. So much had been destroyed by the enemy, and not all the damage had been limited to Japan.

And besides the complete makeover, there were matters that were closer to the heart than he appreciated. For now that Yami no Malik was gone, the small group no longer had so much to distract them from the losses they had suffered from. They had nothing, in fact, to keep them from facing the ghosts of their past that they had so successfully fended off when they were kept busy saving the world. The things they had worked so hard to escape now began to haunt them at every moment, and the knowledge that they would eventually break from the mental trauma remained a constant companion.

Jyounouchi Katsuya hadn't been able to face it, and he was the first to go when he abruptly disappeared from their lives less than two months after it had all 'ended'. It wasn't wholly unexpected, if one looked at it with an unbiased eye. The blond had always blamed himself for the deaths of his sister and Mai, and perhaps he blamed himself for far more than that. The self-loathing he carried from his inability to come to terms with the fact that he had not defeated Yami no Malik when he'd had the chance to had finally taken its toll, and so he just left. Three weeks after his disappearance, a body had been found in the waters of the new Domino Harbor. Seto had always been sure that it was the blond, but they would never know for sure. It had already been badly decomposed and unrecognizable, and despite Anzu's demands that they identify it, no time and resources could be wasted to positively identify one of humanity's saviors, and so it had gone into one of the unmarked mass graveyards that were littered across the planet.

And for Mazaki Anzu, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. She fled Japan and went to America, from where she would periodically send short, impersonal letters to the group she had once fought along sides with. She had needed to get away, needed to escape the life in which she had lost so much that she cared for in order to preserve her sanity. Seto could not and would not deny her that. He never wrote back, and patiently waited for the inevitable end to the slow trickle of notes which would be a sign of, in a way, another death, although only in presence.

Honda Hiroto remained, as dependable and calm as before, a machine with no emotions left. He did what he could quietly and diligently, and when he was finished, the brunet would slip away, reappearing only when he was needed again. Seto didn't know where he went during those periods of inactivity, but kept in mind the fact that Honda would come back when he deemed it necessary. That was a presence he knew would remain, but there was such lack of humanity in it that he often found himself forgetting until the brunet appeared again, a specter who faded in and out.

There were others too, people he had once known but were no longer there. Shaadii was already gone when they had returned to the base, and he himself had quietly disconnected all ties to the rebel organization as soon as he could. He created and maintained a distance between himself and civilization, feeling as if he had already done more than his fair share of rescuing the world and that they could deal with the messy aftermath. Everyone knew where he was, and he was there for anyone to find but he obviously preferred if no one did. It was his well-known predilection to be left alone, although he wasn't ever really... alone.

"How's the hand?"

Ryuuji turned to look at him, a faint smile on the still perfect face. Looking at it and nothing else, no one would ever see the scars both external and internal, but Seto knew so much better.

"Still a bit numb, but that's nothing new. I thought you were going out today." Changing the topic, as usual.

He shook his head as he sat in the window seat next to his lover. "I decided not to."

Ryuuji nodded absent-mindedly before returning his attention to the scenery. He spent most of his time here – Seto didn't know why – watching as the buildings went up and life slowly began to crawl back onto the surface. The brunet often wanted to ask him about this strange fascination, but no sooner had the words finished forming in his mind that Ryuuji would look at him and he would just stop.

Those green eyes weren't hollow, to be exact. They just weren't the same anymore, and it bothered him to realize that they probably never would be. Ryuuji never talked about what had happened, but he didn't need to. Seto could guess.

Strangely, Ryuuji was now his only reason for staying here rather than choosing to leave as everyone else had, whether physically or emotionally. He had always been pathetically dependent on the people he loved, for they kept him sane and more importantly, human. So now, rather than just fading away into the background like Honda or disappearing as Jyounouchi and Anzu had done, he stayed because he still had something to do, somebody to take care of. He couldn't just give up or run away when his boyfriend was still here, and that was how the person who he protected ended up saving his life as well.

"I wanted to be here with you."

"Oh?" was the dry reply. At times like this, he could see hints of the person he had fallen in love with so deeply. The person who, at times, he thought he had lost forever. "And what did I do to deserve this honor?"

Sharp, cold, and suspicious, but it could not hide the attempt at playfulness. It wasn't much, but it had been so long since Ryuuji had even bothered to try.

And for the first time in a very long time, Seto smiled as he gently pulled his lover closer, ignoring the slight flinch from his sudden actions.

"You stayed."

The raven-haired man blinked. "That isn't such a big deal, Seto."

"Yes. It is," he contradicted calmly before leaning down to kiss his beloved on the top of his head. "You didn't have to."

If it had been in a different situation, if it had been a different world, Ryuuji might have given a biting remark or a quietly sarcastic, "Well, I had to get something for my time besides sex." But that person was gone and such thoughts wouldn't make him come back, and the person who was left certainly didn't have any answer to that. Instead, he chose to relax into Seto's arms, a move that was both strange and oddly comforting. Because for him, it was now just easier not to say anything.

Seto supposed it could be a lot worse.

And so they stayed there, watching quietly as the sun set to mark the end of another day.

xxxXxxx

The darkness surrounded him, suffocating and inescapable. How long had he been here? How long had it been since he found this place and remained, surrounded by the bodies of those who had been sacrificed in the name of the... well, darkness? There were so many, and it had taken him the longest time to reach the graveyard's end, or really its beginning. It had taken him the longest time to travel down the rows of empty souls.

Technically, he shouldn't have been able to see them but logic was not an especially strong point of this strange place, so he never bothered to question it. There was no point, after all, and perhaps he was too overwhelmed by the guilt to care anyway.

He had stumbled through these rows of the dead, slowed by the culpability that forced him to pause at each one in order to memorize the person's face. They spoke out to him, telling him of how they died and how it was all his fault, and he took it with a stony silence that would have been admirable if there was anybody to admire it. Some might have fallen silent at the look on the former pharaoh's face, but these were people who did not care and did not want to. For this was his personal nightmare, and each one railed at him as he looked at the body. He let them and moved on, never forgetting.

It seemed to take ages as he slowly made his way to the beginning. Or the ending. It was hard to tell. The farther he traveled, the more often he would spot a face that he recognized, and those were the worse. These were people he had actually known and let down, and at times he wanted to just stop and break down.

But his guilt would not let him, and his determination to see his punishment out to the fullest forced him to continue.

And now... _now_ he was here, where the faces were the most recognizable. Their names swirled around, their voices accused him, their glassy eyes looked up at him. And all he could do was accept them, giving them their time before moving on again and again.

After accepting his punishment – the thief, of all people – he turned to face the last one. There were no voices from this one, for no matter what his once-host could say, the voice would be a godsend. A blessing. There was nothing from this final sacrifice, except for the wind shrieking by with the voices of all those who had perished.

He ignored it.

Finally, he ignored it all.

Slowly, he slumped to the ground, his back resting against the line of gravestones that made up the edge of the area as he looked down at Yuugi. He reached out to take his partner's hand, and his face broke out into a small, relieved smile when it did not disappear. Now, it seemed, nothing mattered anymore. Nothing the darkness could throw at him would ever change anything again because he had reached the person who had kept him going all this time, and it was over.

He wondered if he should say anything, but upon failing to come up with anything, he decided that he didn't have to. Instead, Yami just continued to hold the cold hand as his eyes slowly closed, allowing him to finally... escape.

And as he finally drifted into the eternal night, he could have sworn that he felt Yuugi's hand tighten around his.

End Notes:

As much as they deserve a happy ending, I couldn't give one to them. Perhaps it is strange that the three who seemed to have the least to deal with in this story – Jyounouchi, Honda, and Anzu – would be the ones with the worst endings, but they really didn't have anything left. They lost everything that defined their lives in this battle, everything that they cared for. And when you have nothing left to live for, then what kind of life can you have? Perhaps that is why out of everyone, Seto and Ryuuji got the happiest ending because despite everything they went through, they still had each other. It's cliché, perhaps, but they didn't lose everyone that mattered to them.

As for Yami no Yuugi... well, despite the fact that his end seems to be pretty horrible too, he does manage to find his rest in the end. That I can give him, at least, and he deserves it. The guilt would not let him sleep until he had paid tribute to everyone who he felt he destroyed, but now that he has accomplished that, it is time for him to truly die. And perhaps in that place where he goes, he will be reunited with Yuugi.

In the end, this isn't a happy story. After everything they went through, it really couldn't be. The best I could do was give them closure, and I admit it wasn't a very nice one. I apologize for that, as well as the amount of time it took me to do this. I hope you enjoyed it though.

Many, many thanks to Nalan-san.

Writing Finished – 9/12/2004

Story Complete – 9/28/2004


End file.
